The Chair Mender
It was at the end of the dinner opening the hunting season, at the house of Marquis de Bertrans. Eleven hunters, eight young women, and the doctor of the neighbourhood were seated around the large, well-lit table covered with fruits and flowers.
They came to speak of love, and a great discussion arose, the eternal discussion, as to whether one could love truly but once or many times. They cited examples of people who had never had but one serious love; they also cited other examples of others who had loved often, violently. The men, generally, pretended that passion, like a malady, could strike the same person many times, and strike to kill if an obstacle appeared in his path. Although the point of view was not contestable, the women, whose opinion depended upon literature rather than on observation, affirmed that love, true love, great love, could come only once upon a mortal; that it was like a thunderbolt, this love, and that a heart once touched by it remained ever after so vacant, ravaged, and burned out that no other powerful sentiment, even a dream, could again take root.
The Marquis, having loved much, combated this belief in lively fashion:
“I tell you that one can love many times with all one’s strength and all one’s soul. You cite to me people who have killed themselves for love as proof of the impossibility of a second passion. I answer that if they had not been guilty of this foolishness of suicide, which removed them from all chance of another fall, they would have been healed; and they would have recommenced, again and again, until their natural death. It is with lovers as it is with drunkards—once a drunkard always a drunkard, once a lover, always a lover. It is simply a matter of temperament.”
They chose the doctor as arbitrator, an old Paris physician retired to the country, and begged him to give his opinion.
To be exact, he had none. As the Marquis had said, it is an affair of temperament.
“As for myself,” he continued, “I have known of one passion which lasted fifty-five years without a day of respite, and which was terminated only by death.”
The Marquis clapped his hands.
“This is beautiful,” said a lady. “And what a dream to be so loved! What happiness to live fifty-five years enveloped in a deep, living affection! How happy the person must be, how pleased with life, who was adored like that!”
The doctor smiled:
“In fact, Madame,” said he, “you are right on that point. The loved one was a man. You know him, it is Mr. Chouquet, the chemist of the village. And as for the woman, you knew her too, it is the old woman who put cane seats in chairs, and came every year to this house. But how can I make you understand the whole story?”
The enthusiasm of the women fell. On their faces a look of disgust said: “Pooh!”—as if love could only strike those fine and distinguished creatures who were worthy of the interest of fashionable people.
The doctor continued:
“I was called, three months ago, to the bedside of this old woman. She was dying. She had come here in the old carriage that served her for a house, drawn by the nag that you have often seen, and accompanied by her two great black dogs, her friends and guard. The priest was already there. She made us the executors of her will, and in order to unveil the meaning of her testament, she related the story of her life. I have never heard anything more singular or more affecting.
“Her father made chair seats and so did her mother. She had never known a home in any one place upon the earth. As a little girl, she went around ragged, verminous and dirty. They would stop beside the road at the entrance to towns, unharness the horse and let him browse; the dog would go to sleep with his nose in his paws; the little one would play in the grass while the father and mother, under the shade of the elms bordering the roadside, would mend all the old chairs in the neighbourhood.
“No one ever talked in this moving dwelling. After the necessary words to decide who should make the tour of the houses and who should call out the well-known: ‘Chairs to mend!’ they would sit down to plait the straw, face to face or side by side.
“When the child went too far away or struck up an acquaintance with some urchin in the village, the angry voice of the father would call her: ‘You come back here, you brat!’ And these were the only words of tenderness she ever heard.
“When she grew bigger they sent her around to collect the worn-out chairs to be mended. Then she made some acquaintances from place to place among the street children. Then it would be the parents of her new friends who would call brutally to their children: ‘Will you come here, you scamp! Let me catch you talking to that barefoot again!’
“Often the boys would throw stones at her. When ladies gave her a few pence she kept them carefully.
“One day—she was then eleven years old—as they were passing through this place, she met the little Chouquet behind the cemetery, weeping because some comrade had stolen two sous from him. The tears of this little well-to-do citizen, one of those fortunate ones who in her queer noddle she had thought always content and joyous, quite upset her. She went up to him, and when she learned the cause of his trouble, she poured into his hands all her savings, seven sous, which he took quite naturally, drying his tears. Then, mad with joy, she had the audacity to kiss him. As he was counting the money attentively, he allowed her to do it. Seeing that she was not repulsed or beaten, she did the same thing again. She embraced him with all her strength and all her heart. Then she ran away.
“What could have taken place in her miserable head after that? Did she attach herself to this little boy, because she had sacrificed for him her beggar’s fortune, or because she had given to him her first tender kiss? The mystery is the same for the small as for the great.
“For months she dreamed of this corner of the cemetery and of this boy. In the hope of seeing him again, she robbed her parents, keeping back a sou here and there, either from a chair seat or upon the provisions which she was sent to buy.
“When she returned here she had two francs in her pocket, but she only saw the chemist’s son, very clean behind the big coloured bottles of his father’s shop, between a red decanter and a tapeworm. She loved him there still more, charmed, aroused to ecstasy by this glory of coloured water, this apotheosis of shining crystal.
“This picture became an ineffaceable memory, and when she saw him, the following year, playing marbles near the school with his comrades, she threw herself upon him, seized him in her arms, and kissed him with such violence that he began to howl with fear. Then, in order to appease him, she gave him all her money—three francs and twenty centimes, a real treasure which he looked at with bulging eyes.
“He took it and let her caress him as much as she wished.
“During the next four years she turned into his hand all her surplus, which he pocketed with a clear conscience, in exchange for permitted kisses. Once it was thirty sous, sometimes forty, and once only twelve—and she wept with grief and humiliation at this, but it had been a bad year. The last time there was a five-franc piece, a great round piece that made him laugh with content.
“She thought of nothing but him; and he waited her return with a certain impatience, running to meet her, which made the heart of the girl leap with joy.
“Then he disappeared. They had sent him away to college. She found it out by skilful questioning. Then she used her diplomacy to change her parents’ itinerary and make them pass through here during the holidays. She succeeded but only after two years of diplomacy. Then she had been two years without seeing him, and she scarcely recognized him, so much was he changed; he was so large and handsome in his coat with the brass buttons, and so imposing. He pretended not to see her and passed proudly by near her.
“She wept over it for two days, and after that she suffered without ceasing.
“Every year she returned here, passing him without daring to bow, and without his deigning to raise his eyes to her. She loved him passionately. She said to me: ‘Doctor, he is the only man I have seen on earth; I have not known that there are others existing.’
“Her parents died. She continued their trade, but took with her two dogs instead of one, two terrible dogs that no one would dare encounter.
“One day on entering this village, where her heart still remained, she perceived a young woman coming out of the Chouquet shop on the arm of her well-beloved. It was his wife. He was married.
“That evening she threw herself into the pond which is on the Town Hall square. A drunken man got her out and took her to the pharmacy. Chouquet, the son, came down in his dressing-gown, to care for her; and, without appearing to recognize her, loosed her clothing and rubbed her, then said, in a hard voice: ‘Why, you are mad! You must not do such foolish things.’
“That was sufficient to cure her. He had spoken to her! She was happy for a long time.
“He wanted no remuneration for his services, although she insisted upon paying him. And all her life was spent like this. She made chair seats and thought of Chouquet. Every year she saw him behind his large windows. She got into the habit of buying from him all her medical needs. In this way she could see him, speak to him, and still give him a little money.
“As I told you in the beginning, she died this spring. After having related her sad history, she begged me to give to him she had so patiently loved all the savings of her life, because she had worked only for him, she said, fasting even, in order to put aside, and to be sure that he would think of her at least once after she was dead.
“She then gave me two thousand three hundred and twenty-seven francs. I allowed the priest twenty-seven for burial, and carried off the rest when she had drawn her last breath.
“The next day, I took myself to the house of the Chouquets. They had just finished breakfast, sitting opposite each other, large and red, smelling of their pharmaceutical products, important and satisfied.
“They asked me to sit down; they offered me a kirsch which I accepted; then I commenced my discourse in an emotional voice, persuaded that they were going to weep.
“When he understood that he had been loved by this vagabond, this chair mender, this tramp, Chouquet bounced with indignation, as if she had robbed him of his reputation, of the esteem of honest people, of his honour, of something rare that was dearer to him than life.
“His wife, as exasperated as he, kept repeating: ‘The beggar! The beggar! The beggar!’ without being able to find any other word.
“He got up and walked around the table with long strides, his Greek cap tipped over his ear. He muttered: ‘Think of it, Doctor! This is a horrible thing to happen to a man! What is to be done? Oh! if I had known this while she was alive I would have had her arrested and shut up in prison. And she wouldn’t have got out, I can tell you!’
“I was stupefied at the result of my pious errand. I neither knew what to say nor what to do. But I had to end my mission. I said: ‘She has charged me to give you all her savings, which amount to two thousand three hundred francs. As what I have told you seems to be so very disagreeable to you, perhaps it would be better to give this money to the poor.’
“They looked at me, the man and the woman, unable to move from surprise. I drew the money from my pocket, miserable money from all countries, and of every denomination, gold and copper mixed. Then I asked: ‘What do you decide?’
“Madame Chouquet spoke first. She said: ‘Since it was the last wish of this woman—it seems to me that it would be difficult to refuse it.’
“The husband, somewhat confused, answered: ‘We could always buy with that money something for our children.’
“I remarked, dryly: ‘As you wish.’
“He continued: ‘Yes, give it to us, since she told you to do so. We can always find means of using it in some good work.’
“I laid down the money, bowed, and went out.
“The next day Chouquet came to me and said brusquely: ‘She must have left a wagon here, that—that woman. What are you going to do with that wagon?’
“ ‘Nothing,’ said I, ‘take it if you wish.’
“ ‘Exactly. Just what I want. I will make a shed of it for my kitchen-garden.’
“He was going, but I recalled him. ‘She also left an old horse and her two dogs. Do you want them?’
“He stopped, surprised: ‘Ah! no,’ he answered, ‘what could I do with them? Dispose of them as you wish.’
“Then he laughed and extended his hand which I took. What else could I do? In the country it will not do for the doctor and the chemist to be enemies.
“I have kept the dogs. The priest, who has a large yard, took the horse. The wagon serves Chouquet as a shed, and he has bought five railway shares with the money.
“This is the only profound love that I have met in my life.”
The doctor was silent. Then the Marquise, with tears in her eyes, sighed: “Decidedly, it is only women who know how to love.”