The Birds Fall Down

by Rebecca West

  “Nothing, my dear, dear friend,” said Saint-Gratien. Someone called to Barrault from the corridor, his features contracted, he moved backwards towards the door, as if the voice had been a hook which had caught in his clothes and was hauling him away.

  “Ah, poor Professor Barrault,” said the landlord, “it’s like being in the army for him, always under orders, but married to his dear lady, whom we all respect, there’s no Field-Marshal’s baton in his knapsack, never a chance of a senior command.” He clapped his hand over his mouth. “One must choose between being witty and keeping a hotel, particularly a hotel that caters for the quality. Surely it doesn’t show cowardice and lack of principle to realize that if Voltaire himself had kept a hotel, he would have ceased to make jokes.”

  “Good night,” said Monsieur Saint-Gratien. “No, we don’t want anything more, landlord, nothing at all.” When he had gone a silence fell. Madame Verrier tapped her foot on the ground. Saint-Gratien refilled her glass and his with deliberate nonchalance, and said jauntily, “Poor old Barrault. A shame he should be so hideously bullied by that woman. Sending for him like that.” Madame Verrier said nothing. He sipped his champagne, waited, and went on, “And she’ll be unjust. If poor old Barrault’s had a drop too much, it’s just a drop, but she’ll take the hide off him, and by this time General de Germain will have drunk up the sea and all its fishes, but that’ll be different.”

  Madame Verrier’s voice sprang out of her like a jack-in-the-box. “Why did you have to say that?”

  “To say what?”

  “What you said about Captain Dreyfus?”

  “Alas, I was wrong.” He lifted his hands above his head and made the grimace of a penitent child, but she did not laugh. “I was wrong,” he repeated. “I won’t defend myself.” But a cold, silvery fire flared up in him. “Yet I will. Really, what he did was too gross. Wondering why the heavenly spirits harboured such rage against a patient of consequence, a Russian Count, a Minister of the Tsar, but refusing to put the same question about Dreyfus. And he’s too intelligent not to have seen the truth. But how well,” he sneered, “it’s suited his book to limit his intelligence on this one matter. He’s got a rich wife, they’ve got an ugly daughter, he’s toed the line, he’s come out against Dreyfus, the ugly daughter’s leading a quadrille with the son of a general who’s descended from Charlemagne, though who isn’t, by this time. I don’t like it. I can’t like it.”

  “And what does it matter? What can it matter what any of these imbeciles do? But what does matter is that you took the trouble to dig up Barrault’s error when for the moment it was buried. He was at his best. He often is. You might attach some importance to the fact that he’s a good doctor. You know that’s all that matters really. But you have to say something that raised an issue on which he’s at his worst. You do that to everybody. You like to feel this town of Grissaint round you like a hollow tooth. But what feels at home in a hollow tooth? Only the germ of decay.”

  “How gently,” said Saint-Gratien, in a dry voice, “you reproach me for my lack of gentleness.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said, summoning up a smile, “it’s time we left you to get to bed.”

  “Yes,” agreed Madame Verrier, summoning up the same sort of smile.

  “But I won’t sleep,” murmured Laura, for she felt that they should not separate at this moment. But also she liked both of them being there. Fear was above her and below her and around her.

  Madame Verrier put down her glass, took out her handkerchief, and blew her nose. “Forgive me,” she said softly to Saint-Gratien, “I’m so tired.”

  “I know you are,” he answered as softly.

  “And you,” her voice rising in self-reproach. “You must be dead tired. Those two days of hard work in Paris. The journey back this morning. And all you’ve done since. Forgive me. Forgive me, Professor,” she added, formally.

  “I’m not so tired. But I’m on edge. While I was away, it seems, my son lunched with Barrault and the worst of the anti-Dreyfusard crowd of them. A kind friend told me at the hospital.”

  “I heard it too,” she said, swallowing. “Do forgive me, you know that when I’m tired I don’t think, I bark like a little dog.”

  “No, you spit like a little cat,” he said and filled all three glasses again, and they all laughed and drank.

  But the landlord was back with them. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it. “I sent your learned colleague down to what was waiting for him,” he said, and shook his head sadly. “You might say he’s now in custody.” He came towards the table, and Laura thought that it was odd, it was summertime but he smelled of mince-pies. But of course it was brandy that made mince-pies smell as they do. He must have had too much to drink. Like some butlers, some cooks, and a wicked cousin of her father’s.

  “I’m so tired,” the landlord sighed, sinking into a chair. “Thank you for asking me to sit down,” he said, though nobody had done so, “and thank you for not asking me to have a drink. That’s most understanding of you. I’ve been running here and there all day, seeing to the thousand and one things that have to be done on the very day of the ball, no matter how hard one works beforehand, and I can do with a chair. But a glass of wine, no, indeed. Everywhere I turn someone offers me something—a cognac here, a port there, and the time comes when a wise man knows when to stop. Not another drop for me this evening,” but he made a long arm across the table to the glass of champagne Professor Barrault had been forced to abandon and brought it back to his lips. He looked over the rim at Laura’s face and bowed. “They’re in luck, those ladies downstairs, that Mademoiselle isn’t at the ball. The flower of Grissaint, of all the Pas de Calais, but who would look at them if Mademoiselle was there?” His eyes went upwards as he lifted the glass of champagne to his lips, and before he drained it he paused for a moment to breathe, so softly that the others could just hear it, the words, “The cows.” Refreshed by the draught, he continued: “Oh, it’s not right that Mademoiselle shouldn’t be there, and for such a reason. Oh, that’s most wrong of all. People keep on saying that death is no respecter of persons, but that’s just what it should be, if there was justice. You wouldn’t run a hotel without being a respecter of persons, you’d never make it pay. It wouldn’t have the right atmosphere. Well, the principle that’s right for little things is right for big things. The great should live for ever. Napoleon should never have died. Long live Napoleon,” he cried, raising his glass, but lowering it to say, “No offence to Mademoiselle. I had forgotten you were Russian, I know Napoleon burned St. Petersburg.”

  “Moscow,” said Saint-Gratien.

  “Say Moscow if you like,” said the landlord, “but how much rather the poor people in Moscow would have preferred it to be St. Petersburg. You have to think of other people’s point of view.” He drained the glass and said hopefully, “No, not another.”

  “No, not another,” agreed Monsieur Saint-Gratien.

  “No, not another,” echoed the landlord, as if reading an epitaph. “But what did I come here to say? Ah, yes, I’m so sorry not to have a bedroom for Mademoiselle, but this is a ball of the first importance. All our great families are here, it doesn’t matter where they live, Abbeville and Arras, Boulogne and Roubaix, they’re here tonight. Every room in the hotel is let, and that’s had the frightful result that never have people with such luggage as yours, Mademoiselle, come to my hotel, and I am forced to treat them like vagabonds.”

  “Ah, no,” said Laura, “you’re mixing us with some other people. We didn’t bring our luggage, it went on to Mûres-sur-Mer. We’d only my grandfather’s small case.”

  “But what a case,” said the landlord, “what leather! I said to myself as it was brought in, ‘If that’s their small luggage, what would I not give to see their big luggage, it must be magnificent,’ yet, I couldn’t give you a proper room. It’s my Waterloo. Poor Napoleon. Marie-Louise was quite unworthy of the honour of being his wif
e.”

  “Let’s go downstairs,” Saint-Gratien said to the landlord, “and see how things are getting on.”

  “No, let me speak frankly of my failure,” said the landlord. “You see how I was placed, don’t you? There were only these two rooms in the hotel. And why were they vacant? Well, that worries me. Will there be articles in the newspapers about your esteemed grandfather’s death? If so, I’ll ask for your discretion, because strictly speaking, these rooms were not vacant. They’re rented year in, year out, by a distinguished personage, the last representative of the family who owned this building before it was a hotel, whose palace it was. Oh, you should see the ballroom and the banquet-hall downstairs. On the mantelpiece of the banquet-hall there is carved the family escutcheon, in real marble from Italy. But, what am I thinking of, Mademoiselle, such things seem nothing to you. If you saw it you would simply say to yourself, ‘Ah, just another escutcheon,’ and you would shrug your shoulders and turn away. That’s what you would do. Shrug your shoulders and turn away.” He imitated the movement, was fascinated by it, went on and on making it.

  “For heaven’s sake,” giggled Madame Verrier through her handkerchief, “send the idiot away.”

  “In a minute, in a minute,” said Saint-Gratien. “The little one’s loving it, she’s like me, she’s got vulgar tastes.”

  “What were we talking about?” The landlord inquired. “Not surely just about escutcheons. A noble but not a fruitful subject. Ah, it’s about these rooms. They’re rented to the last gentleman who has a right to display that escutcheon we’ve been speaking of, who’s now a brigadier in a colonial regiment. He’s been my tenant ever since his father sold his house to the company of Grissaintois citizens which employs me, and in which my father held considerable shares, though what has happened to them I hardly know. This furniture you see around us came from the suite on the floor below which he occupied as a youth, chairs and tables, they all came upstairs, along with his hat-box and those ledgers, and his overcoat and his frac, which are in the wardrobe next door. I wish I liked him better, didn’t feel so uneasy when he’s staying here, it’s his eyes, they follow one as if there was some question of owing him money. But it’s not because I can’t like him that I sometimes let this room, though strictly speaking it’s let to him. But I have my reasons, in fairness to myself I must point out that I have my reasons.”

  “What are they?” asked Saint-Gratien cynically.

  The landlord looked blank. Then his face brightened. “For one thing, there’s Christianity. Or the religion of humanity. Call it what you like, which makes it impossible to turn away those in need of shelter, like Mademoiselle and her poor grandfather, the Archduke, who is no longer with us. But it’s not only that, it’s my moral obligation to the Brigadier himself. He tells me not to let the rooms, but he’s insane about them being kept clean, running his finger round the highest ledge, asking me if it’s cleaned out regularly, with those dunning eyes of his. But, oh, if I didn’t let the rooms from time to time when he’s away, then he’d have something to grieve over! Just think, Professor, just think what would happen!”

  “Well, what would happen?” asked Saint-Gratien, wickedly.

  “What would happen?” He could not find an answer for a moment. “Why,” he cried happily, “no chambermaid will keep a room clean if it isn’t going to be let, everybody who has ever run a hotel will tell you that. If I just locked up this suite, as he wants me to do, in no time you wouldn’t be able to see out of the dirty windows, the curtains would be in rags, there’d be cobwebs everywhere, the carpets would be in holes, the furniture would lose all its polish, the castors would come off the chairs, and, heaven help us, I haven’t thought of the worst catastrophe, there might be a fire. Why do you laugh? Easily, easily, there might be a fire, disaster might fall on the possessions of this last survivor of our greatest Grissaintois family, poor possessions but possessions, nevertheless, which he had entrusted to my care, under the roof, which allowing for alterations, quite extensive on this side of the establishment, may be said to have protected him when he still knew the affection of a father, yes, and of a mother, why should she be forgotten? No, that, that I couldn’t do!”

  Exultant, he made a long arm again, and took to himself Monsieur Saint-Gratien’s glass. “To your health, the friend of all Grissaint, the greatest of surgeons in France, in Europe, in the whole world,” he said, “and let me drink to you also, Madame Verrier, so bold, so courageous, so heroic—”

  “Yes, yes,” Saint-Gratien interrupted, “let’s drink to Madame Verrier rather than to myself, a toast to Madame Verrier, and then let’s go downstairs, you and I.”

  “But not without expressing our full gratitude to her,” said the landlord, his eyes growing moist, “for if she withheld her aid from those hapless girls who call her blessed, what would they face but death and despair followed by a life of shame—”

  “It’s time you and I left the ladies,” said Saint-Gratien, springing to his feet.

  “But I can’t go yet, I can’t leave the ladies without making a certain matter to them clear,” protested the landlord, as Saint-Gratien laid a hand on his arm, “and offer my apologies, for they’re victims of my carelessness. For I’ve only one key to this room. There’s another, but the Brigadier, with his foolish obsession about the room, his blindness to his true interests, he’s laid hold of that. At this moment it’ll be in Korea, in Seoul, to be exact. But I can’t find my own key. ‘Where can it be?’ I ask myself. Can I have let it fall into the hands of an unauthorized person? No, a thousand times no. If I have a fault, it’s that my sense of duty is too strict. Well, anyway, whoever I gave it to, he left the room unlocked and didn’t return the key, and probably for a reason with which we must all sympathize, for great happiness leaves us, as I’m sure the doctor will agree, in a state of confusion. Out of these rooms, out of the hotel, he went, whoever he was, feeling as if he had wings—”

  “Let us go downstairs together and look for that key,” said Saint-Gratien, slipping his arm under the landlord’s armpit, and getting him out of his chair and over to the door in a single quicksilver movement, his eyes bright with exasperation and amusement.

  “Useless, we might as well stay here,” said the landlord, trying to sink back into his chair.

  “Then we’ll try and find some champagne instead,” said Saint-Gratien.

  “But I never touch it,” said the landlord, “except at some innocent child’s first communion, or,” he turned his head to explain to Laura, “the wedding of some young lady, the touching wedding of some young lady like yourself. Don’t you, Professor, find something inexpressibly touching about the wedding of some young lady who is, if you understand me, Professor, such a bride as we are sure Mademoiselle will be?”

  “Out, out,” said Saint-Gratien, “and quickly.”

  Laura laughed aloud. Those people in the Arabian Nights called calendars, who were always reaching out for the wine-cup again and again and accounting for their position by claiming that they had been turned into apes or a copper horse had bolted with them; they must have been like the landlord. But Madame Verrier gave only a twisted smile and got on at once with the business of finding cushions for her armchair and unfolding a blanket. She looked smaller than she had done. Laura offered to give up the camp-bed to her, as she had had two hours of sleep, but was refused, and she lay listening to the soft boom of the dance-music and looking at the stucco garlands on the ceiling, which shifted from high relief to low, as the gaslight wavered, while Madame Verrier padded about getting ready for the night. Once there was a flutter of movement and she remarked in a cold, resolute voice, “When women are free, they will no longer wear corsets.” She was evidently getting back to her usual self. When she had turned down the gas to a small trembling source of twilight and settled in her chair, she yawned piteously, but Laura had to ask the question which was on her mind.

  “Did all that nonsense the landlord talked mean that we can’t lock the door?”<
br />
  Madame Verrier’s answer came like a shot from a gun. “Exactly. But don’t be frightened. I won’t leave the room.”

  It was disconcerting when older people showed themselves innocent. This woman had no idea that someone might come in the night so ruthless that it would not matter whether she stayed in the room. There lay like a bar across the darkness behind her eyelids the image of her grandfather, stretched on his bed in the other room, within a shell of discoloured light, which was his Asiatic part disengaging itself as all his human characteristics were disengaging themselves from his body, which was finished, ended. When he totally abandoned his body perhaps his memory would go as well. The dead, she had heard from an Orthodox priest, could not forget the relatives, whom God had chosen for them, but companions whom they had brought to themselves by their own will they might not remember except by God’s special grace. If that were so, then her grandfather might have forgotten Kamensky, and only herself and Chubinov knew what Kamensky really was; and Chubinov was far away now, probably lost to her, up to the neck in the pit of some misadventure. She saw him lolloping down an alley, towards a full moon low over the rooftops, in some town where he had not intended to be, pursued by people who thought he was someone else. She was alone in the universe with Kamensky. She should be glad that Madame Verrier, not knowing what Kamensky was, would be willing to attack him if he came into the room. She wished that her grandfather had been more appreciative of Madame Verrier. True, he had spoken about her in Russian, but she must have been hurt when he sent her out of the room and let the doctors stay. It was a pity, for if he had recovered he would have given her a lavish present, forcing on her asceticism some indulgence she would have enjoyed, perhaps a fur coat. Both her grandfather and her grandmother liked making presents, as they liked food and drink, and so did Tania, who got high-coloured and flushed on it.