The implicit obedience this autocrat commanded set them in a whirl. Baskets and boxes were dragged forth to receive the platters and remains of their meagre feast. In an instant the ground was cleared, and the three ladies had taken their departure to the chaise, which was set apart for their use. The men were already climbing into the house on wheels, when Binet turned to Andre-Louis.
“We part here, sir,” said he, dramatically, “the richer by your acquaintance; your debtors and your friends.” He put forth his podgy hand.
Slowly Andre-Louis took it in his own. He had been thinking swiftly in the last few moments. And remembering the safety he had found from his pursuers in the bosom of this company, it occurred to him that nowhere could he be better hidden for the present, until the quest for him should have died down.
“Sir,” he said, “the indebtedness is on my side. It is not every day one has the felicity to sit down with so illustrious and engaging a company.”
Binet’s little eyes peered suspiciously at the young man, in quest of irony. He found nothing but candour and simple good faith.
“I part from you reluctantly,” Andre-Louis continued. “The more reluctantly since I do not perceive the absolute necessity for parting.”
“How?” quoth Binet, frowning, and slowly withdrawing the hand which the other had already retained rather longer than was necessary.
“Thus,” Andre-Louis explained himself. “You may set me down as a sort of knight of rueful countenance in quest of adventure, with no fixed purpose in life at present. You will not marvel that what I have seen of yourself and your distinguished troupe should inspire me to desire your better acquaintance. On your side you tell me that you are in need of some one to replace your Figaro — your Felicien, I think you called him. Whilst it may be presumptuous of me to hope that I could discharge an office so varied and so onerous...”
“You are indulging that acrid humour of yours again, my friend,” Binet interrupted him. “Excepting for that,” he added, slowly, meditatively, his little eyes screwed up, “we might discuss this proposal that you seem to be making.”
“Alas! we can except nothing. If you take me, you take me as I am. What else is possible? As for this humour — such as it is — which you decry, you might turn it to profitable account.”
“How so?”
“In several ways. I might, for instance, teach Leandre to make love.”
Pantaloon burst into laughter. “You do not lack confidence in your powers. Modesty does not afflict you.”
“Therefore I evince the first quality necessary in an actor.”
“Can you act?”
“Upon occasion, I think,” said Andre-Louis, his thoughts upon his performance at Rennes and Nantes, and wondering when in all his histrionic career Pantaloon’s improvisations had so rent the heart of mobs.
M. Binet was musing. “Do you know much of the theatre?” quoth he.
“Everything,” said Andre-Louis.
“I said that modesty will prove no obstacle in your career.”
“But consider. I know the work of Beaumarchais, Eglantine, Mercier, Chenier, and many others of our contemporaries. Then I have read, of course, Moliere, Racine, Corneille, besides many other lesser French writers. Of foreign authors, I am intimate with the works of Gozzi, Goldoni, Guarini, Bibbiena, Machiavelli, Secchi, Tasso, Ariosto, and Fedini. Whilst of those of antiquity I know most of the work of Euripides, Aristophanes, Terence, Plautus...”
“Enough!” roared Pantaloon.
“I am not nearly through with my list,” said Andre-Louis.
“You may keep the rest for another day. In Heaven’s name, what can have induced you to read so many dramatic authors?”
“In my humble way I am a student of man, and some years ago I made the discovery that he is most intimately to be studied in the reflections of him provided for the theatre.”
“That is a very original and profound discovery,” said Pantaloon, quite seriously. “It had never occurred to me. Yet is it true. Sir, it is a truth that dignifies our art. You are a man of parts, that is clear to me. It has been clear since first I met you. I can read a man. I knew you from the moment that you said ‘good-morning.’ Tell me, now: Do you think you could assist me upon occasion in the preparation of a scenario? My mind, fully engaged as it is with a thousand details of organization, is not always as clear as I would have it for such work. Could you assist me there, do you think?”
“I am quite sure I could.”
“Hum, yes. I was sure you would be. The other duties that were Felicien’s you would soon learn. Well, well, if you are willing, you may come along with us. You’d want some salary, I suppose?”
“If it is usual,” said Andre-Louis.
“What should you say to ten livres a month?”
“I should say that it isn’t exactly the riches of Peru.”
“I might go as far as fifteen,” said Binet, reluctantly. “But times are bad.”
“I’ll make them better for you.”
“I’ve no doubt you believe it. Then we understand each other?”
“Perfectly,” said Andre-Louis, dryly, and was thus committed to the service of Thespis.
CHAPTER II. THE COMIC MUSE
The company’s entrance into the township of Guichen, if not exactly triumphal, as Binet had expressed the desire that it should be, was at least sufficiently startling and cacophonous to set the rustics gaping. To them these fantastic creatures appeared — as indeed they were — beings from another world.
First went the great travelling chaise, creaking and groaning on its way, drawn by two of the Flemish horses. It was Pantaloon who drove it, an obese and massive Pantaloon in a tight-fitting suit of scarlet under a long brown bed-gown, his countenance adorned by a colossal cardboard nose. Beside him on the box sat Pierrot in a white smock, with sleeves that completely covered his hands, loose white trousers, and a black skull-cap. He had whitened his face with flour, and he made hideous noises with a trumpet.
On the roof of the coach were assembled Polichinelle, Scaramouche, Harlequin, and Pasquariel. Polichinelle in black and white, his doublet cut in the fashion of a century ago, with humps before and behind, a white frill round his neck and a black mask upon the upper half of his face, stood in the middle, his feet planted wide to steady him, solemnly and viciously banging a big drum. The other three were seated each at one of the corners of the roof, their legs dangling over. Scaramouche, all in black in the Spanish fashion of the seventeenth century, his face adorned with a pair of mostachios, jangled a guitar discordantly. Harlequin, ragged and patched in every colour of the rainbow, with his leather girdle and sword of lath, the upper half of his face smeared in soot, clashed a pair of cymbals intermittently. Pasquariel, as an apothecary in skull-cap and white apron, excited the hilarity of the onlookers by his enormous tin clyster, which emitted when pumped a dolorous squeak.
Within the chaise itself, but showing themselves freely at the windows, and exchanging quips with the townsfolk, sat the three ladies of the company. Climene, the amoureuse, beautifully gowned in flowered satin, her own clustering ringlets concealed under a pumpkin-shaped wig, looked so much the lady of fashion that you might have wondered what she was doing in that fantastic rabble. Madame, as the mother, was also dressed with splendour, but exaggerated to achieve the ridiculous. Her headdress was a monstrous structure adorned with flowers, and superimposed by little ostrich plumes. Columbine sat facing them, her back to the horses, falsely demure, in milkmaid bonnet of white muslin, and a striped gown of green and blue.
The marvel was that the old chaise, which in its halcyon days may have served to carry some dignitary of the Church, did not founder instead of merely groaning under that excessive and ribald load.
Next came the house on wheels, led by the long, lean Rhodomont, who had daubed his face red, and increased the terror of it by a pair of formidable mostachios. He was in long thigh-boots and leather jerkin, trailing an enormous sword from a crimson baldr
ick. He wore a broad felt hat with a draggled feather, and as he advanced he raised his great voice and roared out defiance, and threats of blood-curdling butchery to be performed upon all and sundry. On the roof of this vehicle sat Leandre alone. He was in blue satin, with ruffles, small sword, powdered hair, patches and spy-glass, and red-heeled shoes: the complete courtier, looking very handsome. The women of Guichen ogled him coquettishly. He took the ogling as a proper tribute to his personal endowments, and returned it with interest. Like Climene, he looked out of place amid the bandits who composed the remainder of the company.
Bringing up the rear came Andre-Louis leading the two donkeys that dragged the property-cart. He had insisted upon assuming a false nose, representing as for embellishment that which he intended for disguise. For the rest, he had retained his own garments. No one paid any attention to him as he trudged along beside his donkeys, an insignificant rear guard, which he was well content to be.
They made the tour of the town, in which the activity was already above the normal in preparation for next week’s fair. At intervals they halted, the cacophony would cease abruptly, and Polichinelle would announce in a stentorian voice that at five o’clock that evening in the old market, M. Binet’s famous company of improvisers would perform a new comedy in four acts entitled, “The Heartless Father.”
Thus at last they came to the old market, which was the groundfloor of the town hall, and open to the four winds by two archways on each side of its length, and one archway on each side of its breadth. These archways, with two exceptions, had been boarded up. Through those two, which gave admission to what presently would be the theatre, the ragamuffins of the town, and the niggards who were reluctant to spend the necessary sous to obtain proper admission, might catch furtive glimpses of the performance.
That afternoon was the most strenuous of Andre-Louis’ life, unaccustomed as he was to any sort of manual labour. It was spent in erecting and preparing the stage at one end of the market-hall; and he began to realize how hard-earned were to be his monthly fifteen livres. At first there were four of them to the task — or really three, for Pantaloon did no more than bawl directions. Stripped of their finery, Rhodomont and Leandre assisted Andre-Louis in that carpentering. Meanwhile the other four were at dinner with the ladies. When a half-hour or so later they came to carry on the work, Andre-Louis and his companions went to dine in their turn, leaving Polichinelle to direct the operations as well as assist in them.
They crossed the square to the cheap little inn where they had taken up their quarters. In the narrow passage Andre-Louis came face to face with Climene, her fine feathers cast, and restored by now to her normal appearance.
“And how do you like it?” she asked him, pertly.
He looked her in the eyes. “It has its compensations,” quoth he, in that curious cold tone of his that left one wondering whether he meant or not what he seemed to mean.
She knit her brows. “You... you feel the need of compensations already?”
“Faith, I felt it from the beginning,” said he. “It was the perception of them allured me.”
They were quite alone, the others having gone on into the room set apart for them, where food was spread. Andre-Louis, who was as unlearned in Woman as he was learned in Man, was not to know, upon feeling himself suddenly extraordinarily aware of her femininity, that it was she who in some subtle, imperceptible manner so rendered him.
“What,” she asked him, with demurest innocence, “are these compensations?”
He caught himself upon the brink of the abyss.
“Fifteen livres a month,” said he, abruptly.
A moment she stared at him bewildered. He was very disconcerting. Then she recovered.
“Oh, and bed and board,” said she. “Don’t be leaving that from the reckoning, as you seem to be doing; for your dinner will be going cold. Aren’t you coming?”
“Haven’t you dined?” he cried, and she wondered had she caught a note of eagerness.
“No,” she answered, over her shoulder. “I waited.”
“What for?” quoth his innocence, hopefully.
“I had to change, of course, zany,” she answered, rudely. Having dragged him, as she imagined, to the chopping-block, she could not refrain from chopping. But then he was of those who must be chopping back.
“And you left your manners upstairs with your grand-lady clothes, mademoiselle. I understand.”
A scarlet flame suffused her face. “You are very insolent,” she said, lamely.
“I’ve often been told so. But I don’t believe it.” He thrust open the door for her, and bowing with an air which imposed upon her, although it was merely copied from Fleury of the Comedie Francaise, so often visited in the Louis le Grand days, he waved her in. “After you, ma demoiselle.” For greater emphasis he deliberately broke the word into its two component parts.
“I thank you, monsieur,” she answered, frostily, as near sneering as was possible to so charming a person, and went in, nor addressed him again throughout the meal. Instead, she devoted herself with an unusual and devastating assiduity to the suspiring Leandre, that poor devil who could not successfully play the lover with her on the stage because of his longing to play it in reality.
Andre-Louis ate his herrings and black bread with a good appetite nevertheless. It was poor fare, but then poor fare was the common lot of poor people in that winter of starvation, and since he had cast in his fortunes with a company whose affairs were not flourishing, he must accept the evils of the situation philosophically.
“Have you a name?” Binet asked him once in the course of that repast and during a pause in the conversation.
“It happens that I have,” said he. “I think it is Parvissimus.”
“Parvissimus?” quoth Binet. “Is that a family name?”
“In such a company, where only the leader enjoys the privilege of a family name, the like would be unbecoming its least member. So I take the name that best becomes in me. And I think it is Parvissimus — the very least.”
Binet was amused. It was droll; it showed a ready fancy. Oh, to be sure, they must get to work together on those scenarios.
“I shall prefer it to carpentering,” said Andre-Louis. Nevertheless he had to go back to it that afternoon, and to labour strenuously until four o’clock, when at last the autocratic Binet announced himself satisfied with the preparations, and proceeded, again with the help of Andre-Louis, to prepare the lights, which were supplied partly by tallow candles and partly by lamps burning fish-oil.
At five o’clock that evening the three knocks were sounded, and the curtain rose on “The Heartless Father.”
Among the duties inherited by Andre-Louis from the departed Felicien whom he replaced, was that of doorkeeper. This duty he discharged dressed in a Polichinelle costume, and wearing a pasteboard nose. It was an arrangement mutually agreeable to M. Binet and himself. M. Binet — who had taken the further precaution of retaining Andre-Louis’ own garments — was thereby protected against the risk of his latest recruit absconding with the takings. Andre-Louis, without illusions on the score of Pantaloon’s real object, agreed to it willingly enough, since it protected him from the chance of recognition by any acquaintance who might possibly be in Guichen.
The performance was in every sense unexciting; the audience meagre and unenthusiastic. The benches provided in the front half of the market contained some twenty-seven persons: eleven at twenty sous a head and sixteen at twelve. Behind these stood a rabble of some thirty others at six sous apiece. Thus the gross takings were two louis, ten livres, and two sous. By the time M. Binet had paid for the use of the market, his lights, and the expenses of his company at the inn over Sunday, there was not likely to be very much left towards the wages of his players. It is not surprising, therefore, that M. Binet’s bonhomie should have been a trifle overcast that evening.
“And what do you think of it?” he asked Andre-Louis, as they were walking back to the inn after the performance.
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“Possibly it could have been worse; probably it could not,” said he.
In sheer amazement M. Binet checked in his stride, and turned to look at his companion.
“Huh!” said he. “Dieu de Dien! But you are frank.”
“An unpopular form of service among fools, I know.”
“Well, I am not a fool,” said Binet.
“That is why I am frank. I pay you the compliment of assuming intelligence in you, M. Binet.”
“Oh, you do?” quoth M. Binet. “And who the devil are you to assume anything? Your assumptions are presumptuous, sir.” And with that he lapsed into silence and the gloomy business of mentally casting up his accounts.
But at table over supper a half-hour later he revived the topic.
“Our latest recruit, this excellent M. Parvissimus,” he announced, “has the impudence to tell me that possibly our comedy could have been worse, but that probably it could not.” And he blew out his great round cheeks to invite a laugh at the expense of that foolish critic.
“That’s bad,” said the swarthy and sardonic Polichinelle. He was grave as Rhadamanthus pronouncing judgment. “That’s bad. But what is infinitely worse is that the audience had the impudence to be of the same mind.”
“An ignorant pack of clods,” sneered Leandre, with a toss of his handsome head.
“You are wrong,” quoth Harlequin. “You were born for love, my dear, not criticism.”
Leandre — a dull dog, as you will have conceived — looked contemptuously down upon the little man. “And you, what were you born for?” he wondered.
“Nobody knows,” was the candid admission. “Nor yet why. It is the case of many of us, my dear, believe me.”
“But why” — M. Binet took him up, and thus spoilt the beginnings of a very pretty quarrel— “why do you say that Leandre is wrong?”
“To be general, because he is always wrong. To be particular, because I judge the audience of Guichen to be too sophisticated for ‘The Heartless Father.’”
“You would put it more happily,” interposed Andre-Louis — who was the cause of this discussion— “if you said that ‘The Heartless Father’ is too unsophisticated for the audience of Guichen.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 347
