Broken Music by Phyllis Bottome

Author:Phyllis Bottome [Bottome, Phyllis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2023-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV

Table of Contents

IF Mahomet, on arriving at the foot of the mountain, had met with a frank repulse from the object of his condescension—say, an earthquake or a stream of molten lava—it would have been permissible on the part of the prophet to feel a little hurt. So that Jean may be excused for suffering the same kind of annoyance when the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas shut their doors in his face.

It had been an effort for Jean to go back to them at all, an effort that had at once attacked his independence and his pride, and having made this sacrifice, he was not at all prepared to find that it had been made in vain. His old friends, the fellow clerks, winked sympathetically, and one of them even invited him to return for lunch at noon. Jean refused his offer somewhat magnificently, little dreaming that in a very short time he would look at a proffered meal as one of the more important gifts of Heaven. He turned away from the gloomy portals of his former prison-house and said to himself that he was still free; as indeed he was, quite free, with Paris before him, twenty francs in his pocket, and two extremely good suits of unpaid-for clothes.

The weeks that followed seemed an incredible time to Jean to look back upon—and yet, while they were passing it was every other time that seemed incredible. They began quite easily with that useful lady known in Paris as “ma Tante.” “Ma Tante” willingly accepted Jean’s gold watch and chain, stooped to his tie-pin and few small articles of jewellery, and by and by absorbed, with an increasingly small return, all that he did not wear of his wardrobe. Jean belonged to that class of society which knows what it is to do without some of its wants, but to whom it is wholly inconceivable that it should ever be asked to do without them all.

Jean informed Margot quite comfortably that a little went a long way, but he took for granted that he should have a little. A line, he felt, must be drawn somewhere, a D’Ucelles could hardly starve; and he was very cheerful and quite funny about it to Margot. Margot, however, took matters very seriously; she didn’t seem to think that lines are drawn anywhere, or that there was anything essentially amusing in a D’Ucelles without an overcoat.

She merely bought Jean a winter overcoat for a Christmas present. Jean almost quarrelled with her on the subject; but Margot cried, and said he couldn’t really be her friend unless he took it; so eventually they went to early Mass together, and Jean wore the overcoat.

Then Jean got a job as guide to a large and ignorant English family, who took an absorbing interest in the relics of Napoleon. While they remained in Paris nothing further went to ma Tante and Jean paid his board regularly.

Unfortunately even Napoleon can be exhausted in time, and having

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