Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  ‘That doesn’t prove he’s coming.’

  ‘But I’ve just seen the fiacre in the Rue du Petit-Banquier. That’s when I started to run.’

  ‘How do you know it was the same fiacre?’

  ‘Because I remembered the number.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘440.’

  ‘Good. You’re a bright child.’

  The girl gazed boldly at her father and looking down at her footgear said:

  ‘Bright I may be, but I’m blessed if I’ll wear these foul shoes again, they’re unhealthy as well as filthy, and I don’t know anything nastier than soles that flap and make a squelching noise with every step you take. I’d sooner go barefoot.’

  ‘I don’t blame you, my dear,’ her father said with a gentleness of tone that was in marked contrast to her own sharpness. ‘But they wouldn’t let you inside a church. The poor have to have shoes. You can’t visit God barefoot,’ he added in a bitter aside, and then reverted to the main subject. ‘But you’re absolutely sure he’s coming?’

  ‘He’s on my heels,’ she said.

  The man drew himself to his full height while a sort of radiance spread over his face.

  ‘Wife,’ he said, ‘do you hear? The philanthropist is coming. Put out the fire!’

  She stared at him bemusedly without moving. Darting with the nimbleness of an acrobat, he seized a broken jug standing on the mantelshelf and poured water on the embers. Then he said to the older girl:

  ‘Strip that chair!’

  She, too, failed to understand. Seizing the chair, he stripped it of its seat by thrusting a foot through the straw.

  ‘Is it cold out?’ he asked.

  ‘Bitterly cold. It’s snowing.’

  He turned to the younger girl, seated on the bed by the window, and bellowed at her:

  ‘Move, you idle slut. Can’t you ever do anything? Get down to the end of the bed and smash a window-pane.’

  She moved to the end of the bed and huddled there, shivering.

  ‘Smash a window-pane?’

  ‘You heard what I said.’

  She stood up on the bed. By standing on tip-toe she could just reach the dormer window. In terrified obedience she punched it with her fist, and the pane broke and fell with a clatter to the floor.

  ‘Good.’ The man stood intently surveying the room like a general studying the field of a forthcoming battle. The woman, who had so far not uttered a word, now stood up and said in low slurred accents, as though she had difficulty in speaking:

  ‘My dear, what is all this for?’

  ‘Get into bed,’ he answered.

  The peremptory tone admitted of no dispute. She flung herself heavily on their bed. At that moment a sob was heard.

  ‘Now what’s the matter?’ the man demanded.

  The younger girl, without emerging from the darkness of the corner where she was now crouched, held up a bleeding arm. She had taken refuge by her mother’s bed and was crying. It was the mother’s turn to start upright

  ‘There – you see! All this silliness! She’s cut herself breaking the window-pane.’

  ‘Good. I thought she would.’

  ‘What do you mean – good?’

  ‘Shut up,’ said the man. ‘I’ve abolished the liberty of the press.’ Tearing a strip off the woman’s chemise he was wearing, he rapidly bandaged the child’s wrist. ‘Better and better,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve got a torn shirt as well.’

  An icy breeze was blowing in, bringing with it a mist which spread through the room like cotton-wool unravelled by invisible fingers. Through the broken pane they could see the snow falling. The intense cold presaged by the Candlemas sunset was now upon them. Gazing about him to make sure that nothing had been overlooked, the man picked up a worn shovel and scattered dry ash over the wetted embers to hide them. Then, standing with his back to the fireplace, he announced:

  ‘Now we’re ready for the philanthropist.’

  VIII

  Light and squalor

  The older girl reached out a hand to her father.

  ‘Feel how cold I am,’ she said.

  ‘Rubbish,’ he answered. ‘I’m much colder than you.’

  The woman burst out:

  ‘Whatever it is, you’re always worse off than anybody else!’

  ‘Hold your tongue,’ he said, and the look he gave her reduced her to silence.

  A lull ensued. The older girl casually scraped mud off the hem of her cloak while the younger one continued to sob. Her mother had taken her head in her hands and was kissing her while she said in a low voice:

  ‘It’s nothing, darling. Don’t cry. You’ll make your father cross.’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ the father said. ‘Nothing of the kind. Cry as much as you like. Go on – cry!’ He turned to his elder daughter. ‘It’s all very fine,’ he said, ‘but he still hasn’t arrived. Suppose he doesn’t come? I’ll have put out the fire, knocked the bottom out of a chair, ripped up a chemise, and smashed a window all for nothing.’

  ‘Besides hurting your child,’ the mother said.

  ‘This place is as cold as an ice-house. Suppose he doesn’t come after all! He certainly doesn’t mind keeping us waiting. He’s probably thinking, “Let ‘em wait – that’s all they’re fit for.” Oh, God, how I hate them! I’d like to strangle the lot of ‘em, the rich, the so-called charitable rich, living in clover and going to Mass, and dishing out sops and pious sentiments. They think they’re our lords and masters and they come and patronize us and bring us their cast-off clothes and a few scraps to eat. Bastards! That isn’t what I want. Money’s what I want, and money’s what they never give us. They say we’ll just spend it on drink, that we’re all sots and loafers. And what about them? Where did they spring from, for God’s sake? Thieves, that’s what they were, otherwise they’d never have got rich. I’d like to take the whole blasted works and stand it on its head. Perhaps everything would get smashed up, but at least it would mean that everybody would be in the same boat and we’d be that much to the good … But what’s he doing, this philanthropist of yours? Is he coming? Perhaps the old imbecile has forgotten the address. I don’t mind betting –’

  At this moment there was a light tap on the door. The man dashed to open it, bowing almost to the ground as he did so.

  ‘Please come in, my dear sir! My noble benefactor, please enter, with your charming young lady.’

  An elderly man and a young girl appeared in the doorway; and Marius, still at his peep-hole, was seized with a wonderment that it is beyond the power of words to describe.

  It was She.

  She! Everyone who has ever loved will feel the force of that small word. In the luminous mist that suddenly clouded his vision Marius could scarcely distinguish her features – the eyes, forehead, and mouth, the sweet face that had lighted his life for six months and then vanished, plunging him in darkness. And now the vision had reappeared – in this setting of unspeakable squalor!

  He was trembling, his heart beating so wildly that his sight was troubled and he felt himself to be on the verge of tears. To be seeing her again after having searched for so long! It was as though he had lost his soul and now found it restored to him.

  She was unchanged except that she seemed a little pale. Her face was enclosed in a hood of purple velvet, and she was wearing a black satin cloak and a long skirt beneath which a neat anklebone was visible. Her companion, as usual, was Monsieur Leblanc. On entering the room she had deposited a large parcel on the table.

  The Jondrette woman, huddled on the bed behind the door, was glowering at the hood and the cloak and that delightful, happy face.

  IX

  Jondrette is near to weeping

  The garret was so dark that to anyone coming from outside it was like entering a cavern. The newcomers therefore moved uncertainly, scarcely able to distinguish the objects around them, whereas they themselves were entirely visible to the denizens of the cavern, whose eyes were accustomed to the half-light. Monsi
eur Leblanc, with his kind, melancholy gaze turned to Jondrette, said:

  ‘Monsieur, you will find a few things in the parcel – woollen stockings and blankets and suchlike.’

  ‘Most noble sir, you overwhelm me,’ said Jondrette, again bowing to the ground. But while the visitors were gazing about them, examining their lamentable surroundings, he muttered in a rapid aside to his elder daughter: ‘What did I tell you? A bundle of clothes, nothing about money. They’re all the same. Incidentally, the letter you gave the old fool – how was it signed?’

  ‘Fabantou.’

  ‘Ah, the dramatic artist.’

  He had asked only just in time, for at this moment Monsieur Leblanc turned back to him and said uncertainly:

  ‘I see that you are greatly to be pitied, Monsieur –’ and he paused.

  ‘Fabantou,’ said Jondrette promptly.

  ‘Ah, yes, Monsieur Fabantou.’

  ‘An actor, Monsieur, who has had some success in his time.’ And Jondrette, evidently considering that the moment had come to assert himself, proceeded in a voice that mingled the stridency of a fairground busker with the abjectness of a street-corner beggar. ‘A former pupil of Talma, Monsieur, the great Talma himself! Fortune smiled upon me once, but now, alas, I am overwhelmed with misfortune. We are without food, Monsieur, and without heating. No warmth for my unhappy children. Our only chair without a seat. A broken window – in this weather! And my wife ill in bed.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Monsieur Leblanc.

  ‘And our younger daughter injured,’ said Jondrette.

  The child, distracted by the newcomers, was so absorbed in contemplating the young lady that her sobs had ceased.

  ‘Bawl, can’t you?’ muttered Jondrette under his breath, and, operating with the dexterity of a pickpocket, he gave her wrist a smart pinch. It drew a loud yell from her, and the lovely girl whom Marius had christened Ursula started forward.

  ‘Oh, the poor child!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You can see for yourself, dear young lady,’ said Jondrette. ‘Her wrist is bleeding. She had an accident in the machine-shop where she works at six sous an hour. They may have to cut off her arm.’

  ‘Is that really so?’ asked the old gentleman in consternation, and the daughter, taking it seriously, yelled louder than ever.

  ‘Alas, I fear so,’ her father said.

  For some moments Jondrette had been gazing intently at the ‘philanthropist’, seeming to study his face while he talked, as though he were trying to remember something. Taking advantage of the fact that the visitors were now questioning the child about her injury, he darted to the side of his wife, who was huddled apathetically on her bed, and said in a whisper:

  ‘Take a good look at this man.’

  He then returned to Monsieur Leblanc and resumed his lament.

  ‘You see how it is, Monsieur. The only rag of clothing I possess is this torn chemise belonging to my wife – in the middle of winter! I can’t go out for lack of clothes. If I had a coat I’d go and see Mademoiselle Mars, who is an old and dear friend. Is she still living in the Rue de la Tour-des-Dames? We played together in the provinces, Monsieur. I shared in her triumphs. Célimène would come to my assistance, Monsieur! Elmira would lend Belisarius a helping hand! But I’ve nothing to wear and not a sou in the house. My wife sick, my child dangerously injured and not a sou. My wife has fits of giddiness. It’s her time of life, and the nervous system has something to do with it. She needs treatment and so does my daughter, but who’s to pay the doctor and the apothecary? I’d go on my knees for a penny-piece! And do you know, my sweet young lady, and you, my generous protector, who breathe the air of virtue and kindness and lend distinction to the church where my daughter sees you every day when she is at her devotions … Because I have taught my children religion, Monsieur. I have never wanted them to go on the stage. They have been strictly brought up, and no backsliding! I make no bones about that. The times I’ve lectured them on honour and virtue and morality. You have only to ask them. They know how to behave. They have a father to reckon with. They are not to be numbered among the unfortunates who because they have no family end by becoming public property – Mamselle Nobody who ends up Madame Anybody. There’s none of that in the Fabantou family. They have been taught virtue and honesty and proper conduct and faith in God!… And do you know, most worthy sir, what is going to happen to us tomorrow? Tomorrow, the fourth of February, is the terrible day, the last day our landlord will allow us. If by this evening I have not paid in full we shall all be turned out – my sick wife and I, our elder daughter and our injured child – turned out into the street without shelter from the snow and rain! That is the position, Monsieur. I owe four quarters’ rent, a whole year, making sixty francs!’

  This was a blatant lie. The four quarters would have come to only forty francs, and he could not owe as many as four, since Marius, less than six months previously, had paid the two that were then outstanding. MonsieurLeblanc got a five-franc piece out of his pocket and laid it on the table; and Jondrette found a moment to whisper in his daughter’s ear:

  ‘See that? The bastard! What the devil’s the good of five francs? It won’t even pay for the chair and window-pane.’

  Monsieur Leblanc meanwhile was taking off the brown overcoat he wore over his blue tail-coat. He laid it across the back of the chair and said:

  ‘Five francs is all I have left on me at the moment, Monsieur Fabantou. But I’ll take my daughter home and come back this evening. I think you said you need the money by this evening.’

  Jondrette’s face was suddenly and wonderfully illumined. He replied eagerly:

  ‘Quite right, most worthy sir. I have to be at my landlord’s by eight o’clock’

  ‘Then I’ll come at six and I’ll bring you the sixty francs.’

  ‘My noble benefactor!’ cried Jondrette. And he added in an aside to his wife: ‘Are you looking at him?’

  Taking his daughter’s arm, Monsieur Leblanc turned towards the door.

  ‘Until this evening, then.’

  ‘Six o’clock,’ said Jondrette.

  ‘Six o’clock precisely.’

  But as they were in the act of leaving the elder Jondrette girl exclaimed:

  ‘Monsieur, you’re forgetting your overcoat.’

  Jondrette darted a blistering look at her, accompanied by a massive shrug of the shoulders. Monsieur Leblanc said smiling:

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten it. I’m leaving it here.’

  ‘My protector!’ cried Jondrette. ‘My princely benefactor! I am moved to tears. Allow me to accompany you to your fiacre.’

  ‘In that case you had better put the coat on,’ said Monsieur Leblanc. ‘It is really very cold.’

  Jondrette required no further urging. He promptly wrapped himself in the coat. The visitors left the room together, with Jondrette leading the way.

  X

  The price of a public conveyance

  Marius had missed nothing of the foregoing scene, and yet in a sense he had seen nothing. His eyes had been intent upon the girl, his heart had as it were enfolded her from the moment she entered the room; and throughout the time that she was there he had known the state of ecstasy that dulls everyday perception, concentrating his whole being upon a single matter. It was not a girl that he saw, but a glow of light enclosed in a satin cape and a fur hood. If some heavenly body had appeared in the room he could have been no more amazed.

  He had watched her as she undid the parcel of clothes and blankets, following her every movement and seeking to hear her words as she gently questioned the ailing mother and bent compassionately over the injured child. He already knew her face and figure, her eyes and forehead and grace of movement, but he could not be quite sure that he had heard her voice, although he thought that once in the Luxembourg he had heard her speak a few words. He would have given years of his life to be able to hear everything she said, to be able to carry away some of that music in his heart, but nearly all was lost in the flou
rishings and trumpetings of Jondrette. He could only devour her with his eyes, scarcely able to believe that so exquisite a creature could be present amid the unspeakable inmates of that foul place, like a humming-bird in a nest of toads.

  His only thought when she had departed was to go after her, to follow on her footsteps until at least he had found out where she lived and ran no risk of losing her again after this miraculous rediscovery. Jumping down from the chest of drawers, he snatched up his hat; but then on the verge of opening his door, he hesitated. The corridor was a long one, the stairs steep and narrow, and Jondrette was an indefatigable talker. Monsieur Leblanc would probably not yet have got back to his fiacre. If he should look round and see Marius in that house he might well take fright again, and again find the means of eluding him. What should he do? Should he wait a little? If he did so he might be too late to see where the fiacre went. He hovered in perplexity, and at length, deciding that he must run the risk of being seen, he left his room.

  The corridor was empty and so were the stairs. Hurrying down, he arrived on the boulevard just in time to see a fiacre turn the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, heading back into Paris. He ran after it, and at the corner, saw it rapidly descending the Rue Mouffetard. It was already a long way ahead, and there seemed to be no way of overtaking it. Certainly he could not do so on foot, and in any case a person running madly after them would be bound to attract the notice of the occupants, and he would be recognized. But at this moment, by a rare and wonderful chance, he saw an empty hackney-cab going along the boulevard. Here was the solution of his problem, a means of following the fiacre swiftly and without the risk of being seen. Signalling to the driver, he called:

  ‘One hour!’

  Marius was without a necktie; he was wearing his shabby working jacket, from which several buttons were missing, and his shirt was torn. The cab stopped, but the driver, looking him over, reached out a hand with a grin, rubbing his thumb against his index-finger.