“You don’t know how to dance, eh?
You come here, Edgar.”
She danced a while with him in the semi-darkness.
Then, rosy and smiling:
“Bravo!” she laughed; “we’ll
stop now.”
Servien stood by in gloomy silence, conscious of his
own inefficiency. His heart swelled with a sullen
anger. He was hurt, and longed for somebody or
something to vent his hate upon.
The drive home was a silent one. Jean nearly
gave himself cramp in his determined efforts not to
touch with his own the knees of Madame Ewans’
who dozed on the back seat of the conveyance.
She hardly awoke enough to bid him good-bye when he
alighted at his father’s door.
As he entered, he was struck for the first time by
a smell of paste that seemed past bearing. The
room where he had slept for years, happy in himself
and loved by others, seemed a wretched hole.
He sat down on his bed and looked round gloomily and
morosely at the holy-water stoup of gilt porcelain,
the print commemorating his First Communion, the toilet
basin on the chest of drawers, and stacked in the
corners piles of pasteboard and ornamental paper for
binding.
Everything about him seemed animated by a hostile,
malevolent, unjust spirit. In the next room he
could hear his father moving. He pictured him
at his work-bench, with his serge apron, calm and
content. What a humiliation! and for the second
time in a dozen hours he blushed for his parentage.
His slumbers were broken and uneasy; he dreamed he
was turning, turning unendingly in complicated figures,
and it was impossible always to avoid touching Madame
Evans’ knee, though all the time he was horribly
afraid of doing it. Then there was a great field
full of thousands and thousands of marble pigs stuck
up on stone pedestals, among which he could see Monsieur
Delbeque promenading slowly up and down.
Next morning he awoke feeling sour-tempered and low-spirited.
“Well, my boy,” his father asked him,
blowing noisily at each spoonful of soup he absorbed,
“well, did you enjoy yourself yesterday?”
He answered curtly and crossly. Everything stirred
his gorge. His aunt’s print gown filled
him with a sort of rage.
His father propounded a hundred minute inquiries;
he would fain have pictured the whole expedition to
himself as he consumed his bowl of soup. He had
seen Saint-Cloud in his soldiering days; but he had
never been there since. He had a bright idea;
they would go to Versailles, the three of them; his
sister would see to having a bit of veal cooked overnight,
and they could take it with them. They would
have a look at the pictures, eat their snack on the
great lawn, and have a fine time generally.
Jean, who was horrified at the whole project, opened
his exercise-books and buried his head in his lessons,
to avoid the necessity of hearing any more and answering
questions. He did not as a rule show such alacrity
about setting to work. His father remarked on
the fact, commending him for his zeal.
