The Commonsense of Monsieur Lebel

by Achmed Abdullah

THE COMMONSENSE OF MONSIEUR LEBEL

By Achmed Abdullah

CONSIDER the man’s name: Paul Marie Lebel—prosy, simple, homespun, commonsensical, and throbbing with stout burgess virtues; a name in itself, as it were, a sententious apothegm of the ultra middle classes of that grey old Paris which stretches from the Seine toward the Halles Centrales; a name as representative of that neighborhood as Cadwalader Jones is of a certain portion of Philadelphia and as George Washington Jefferson Davis Tolliver is of the dappled and piebald, though carelessly counted, G. O. P. votes of Sumter County, South Carolina.

Stout and commensensical, too, was Paul Lebel’s way of living and of earning a living.

To take again the negative prototype: had he been a native of Braintree, Mass., he would have taken instinctively to clerking in a hardware store; his evening leisure would have been divided between the baseball averages and a few tomes of heavy Chautauqua Kultur purchased on the instalment plan; his mother would have gone in for Peruna and for the feminine pastime known as “plain tatting”; his wife would have presided over the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the First Methodist-Episcopal Church and would have revelled in the less digestible poems of Browning, while his son, dreaming of the Big City, would have preferred Henry Clay Frick’s autobiography to the high school Moral Reader.

Had he been a native of New York, he would have had a wife, a bull pup, a second-hand Ford, and no children; he would have been bookkeeper to a Pine Street forecloser of fancy mortgages, and he would have commuted every night on the Six Eighteen in the direction of a semi-detached Long Island villa residence which overlooked a neat network of railway steel, a pile of battered tomato tins, and a neighbor’s family wash swinging in the breeze with the pompous baroque dignity peculiar to wet red flannels.

But Paul Lebel was a Parisian. His father had fought for the Commune. His maternal great-great-grandmother had been one of the tricoteuses of the Quartier Saint Antoine who marched up to Versailles with the lovely head of the Princess Lamballe decorating the business end of a pikestaff. So he brooked no master except the duly appointed bureaucrats of the Republic and was an independent merchant who lived at the back of his six by ten shop in the Rue de Turbigo.

There he specialized in the edible variety of the genus Snail—an animal best served with cream sauce, chopped parsley and a dreamy spring whiff of garlic; an animal not as vivacious as the mussel which is dragged up from the slimy black river bed of the Seine, nor as elusive as the lark which is slain in the forests of Fontainebleau; thus an article of commerce more sane, less risky, and the financial standby of the widowed Monsieur Lebel and of his only child, Julienne.

Julienne had reached the delightful age of seventeen. She was small and round and quick; her hair was as russet as a winter apple and flecked with tiny points of gold; her eyes were grey and frank, her forehead low and broad, she had the whitest teeth in the world—and she was in love with Monsieur Hector Epernan, the headwaiter of the restaurant La Croûtte, just around the corner from her father’s shop, in the Rue Pirouette.

Hector returned Julienne’s love a thousand-fold. He dreamt of the day when she should be his wife. But he, too, was sound and simple and homespun. He, too, had a hatful of common sense—and it was there that the rub came in.

For while his American prototype would have had a spark in his soul—a tiny spark through which he would attempt, though not necessarily succeed, to move mountains when the right girl happened along—the headwaiter was French; and so he was just a little calculating, very cool and clever, always sousing his hot Latin fancies in a bucket of merciless Latin common sense.

Thus he saw two things.

One was that Monsieur Lebel’s tiny parlor boasted neither ormolu clock, nor terracotta bas-reliefs framed in crimson plush, nor Smyrna rug, nor crayon enlargements of ancient daguerreotypes, nor any other such evidence of solid bourgeois grandeur; that Lebel never consumed more than one apéritif at the restaurant La Croûtte, that he played his evening game of four-hand manille for nominal stakes, and that his Sunday frock coat and silk hat were of ancient if well brushed architecture.

The other was that he himself was twenty-seven, that he had served his two years in the army, and that it was time for him to settle down and to become an independent and tax-paying member of society with a business of his own. And, not far from the Halles Centrales, a little café was for sale. It was the swagger resort of the Quartier; a place famed for its mulled wine, its beef à la Bordelaise, its Norman cheese served with sugar and clotted cream, and frequented by the hearty, well-feeding green-grocers and butchers and market-gardeners of the great Market.

Nor was the price demanded exorbitant. Thirty thousand francs would cover it—and little Julienne!—he could imagine her behind the cashier’s desk, with the sun dancing through the high window in back and weaving fantastic gold patterns in her russet mane—little Julienne, jesting with the customers and taking in the money!

He would speak to Lebel. Perhaps, in spite of appearances, the latter had hidden away a stout wad of savings.

So, on his first afternoon off, he called on the snail merchant, dressed ceremoniously in full evening dress as befits a citizen of France who goes out a-courting.

II

Lebel saw. He understood at once, and he was pleased.

For he liked Hector Epernan—and as to his daughter—why, of course, she was young, only seventeen. But seventeen is past the bib-and-gingham period, after all. Seventeen costs money, what with frocks and frills and silly little shoes at twelve francs a pair.

Too, there was that charming, black-haired, plump little Claire Devereux in her two-room flat of the Rue de la Grande Truanderie; a splendid woman who adored him, but inclined to ask for things besides snails. And how was he to choose eternally between his daughter and his petite amie? A pair of shoes given to the one meant a scene with the other and vice versa—and the snail trade was not very lucrative—and—

Paul Lebel was like his countryman, the great Napoleon. He believed that attack was the best strategy of defense. He did not wait for Hector to state the reasons for his visit. He waved a pudgy hand benignly and winked an artful, elderly wink.

“Do not say a word, Monsieur Epernan,” he said, “the black coat, the white tie, the starched shirt, the whole sympathetic mingling of elegant finery—I understand! You adore my daughter—and I,” here he shook the other’s hand, “I am glad of it—by the name of the ten thousand pale-blue rabbits! Marry her, my boy!”

He was about to give his parental blessing and had already pointed his lips to bestow a parental kiss, when the headwaiter regained his common sense. He made a little gesture with thumb and second finger and reinforced the gesture by whispering: “And as to financial arrangements, Monsieur—”

Lebel behaved exactly as if he had received a tragic and mortal shock. He breathed hard. He opened wide his china-blue eyes. He clutched his neat beard with the fingers of his left hand.

“Financial arrangements?” he wailed. “Money—between you, my boy, and me?” and when the other inclined his head he continued in a low voice, “Alas! the snail trade is not booming. It gives me a living—a fair living—I will not deny—but no more.”

He paused; then, seeing the look on the other’s face and thinking at the same moment of little, black-haired Claire, he continued quickly:

“Monsieur, youth is a golden and brave-clanking thing!”—he pronounced this with the rousing accents of Guitry himself. “Monsieur, I, too, married when I was your age. I married the late Madame Lebel, a woman loyal, handsome, capable—a woman who could stuff the hind-leg of a tender rabbit with truffles and chestnuts and chives in a manner which would have caused the famed chef Joseph to faint with envy! But, Monsieur, I married this jewel of a woman though she did not possess a single centime. I, Monsieur, had a heart—I had courage—I was a man and a Frenchman!”

He did not mention the fact that a massive cudgel poised significantly in the brawny fist of the late Madame Lebel’s blacksmith brother had been an added incentive for his marriage. The headwaiter knew it, too, for he was a native of the Quartier and familiar with its gossip and rumors and scandals; but both gentlemen agreed silently to overlook the omission.

Instead Hector shook his head. He spoke of his ambitions, of the little café. In other words, he demanded a dowry—thirty thousand francs. Otherwise—though his heart was beneath the adorable little feet of Mademoiselle julienne—enfin—a gesture pregnant with regret of the most bitter!

Lebel switched his tactics. He tried the sting of hidden insults, spiced with the picturesque sarcasm of Paris. He mentioned casually that a man who marries for money is a sacred type with the morals of an eel and the sympathetic character of an angleworm—an especially fat and ungainly angleworm! He opined that such a man’s heart was a scenic depravity and that his soul was made of brown, squidgy, malevolent mud. He compared such a man to a pig-tailed rat, to a cross between a hyena and a hippopotamus, and also to a cursed cooking-stove—but the headwaiter remained as adamant as his starched shirt front. He, too, had common sense; and so he left Monsieur Lebel, a victim to groping, bitter reflection.

Lebel sighed. His thoughts turned from bitterness to brooding, self-pitying melancholia and presently, as always in such moments, they began to revolve around the memory of Madame, his late wife—around her sterling character, her courage, her massive brain power. If only she had lived to see this day! She would have found a way out of this annoying dilemma—a way to force the mercenary headwaiter’s hand!

Lebel shed a few tears. Ah, yes—the late Madame!—he had loved and respected her in spite of the brawny blacksmith brother’s persuasive cudgel. During her lifetime there had been no need of any Madame Claire—blonde, or brown, or red-haired. She had been such a sensible woman—thought Lebel—why, she had been the sort to hear the grass grow and the fleas cough: so sharp and keen and clever! There was no headwaiter who could have held out before her superior wit—and Lebel opened his watch and looked at the little half-faded photograph of her which adorned the inside of the case.

A handsome woman she had been: big and dark and with just that suspicion of pout to her upper lip which gives zest to a kiss. How lifelike she looked—thought Monsieur Lebel, turning the little photograph to the light—with that coil of raven hair above her broad, white forehead, the smile curling the corners of her lips, the small, straight nose with the well-carved nostrils, the merry twinkle in the deep chasm of her eyes ... and the rope of imitation pearls accentuating the curve of her magnificent, statuesque neck!

He smiled.

Somehow, he could never separate her memory from these pearls. Imitation pearls, imitation jewelry of all sorts, had been her one vanity, her one foible.

He remembered when she had bought her first strand of graded wax pearls.

It had been six months after their marriage. She had been out all afternoon, to a matinee at the Cirque Nouveau. She had returned very late, but she had been so happy and flushed and excited with the drolleries of Foot-Tit and Chocolat, the famed clowns of the Cirque Nouveau, that he had forgiven her on the spot.

Of course he had poked fun at her when he saw the opalescent string about her neck—“imitations!” she had explained. “I picked them up in a little shop on the Rue Saint-Honoré. Twenty francs—cheap, hein?”—and when he had replied that twenty francs were twenty francs and that he himself disliked pinchbeck, she had answered that she adored jewels.

“But these pearls are false!”

“And what difference does that make?” she had demanded; “it is not the value which I love, but the beauty, the richness of color and form. They are imitations—good—what of it? You could not tell them from originals, and even the great ladies of the Faubourg wear them. They keep their real pearls and diamonds in steel vaults”—and he had laughed and kissed her.

It gave her pleasure, he had thought, and so, through the years that followed, she had bought many a piece: imitation pearls and diamonds and emeralds and rubies. She must have gradually spent between eight and nine hundred francs on them—and then an idea came to Monsieur Lebel!

The jewels were upstairs in the garret, in the late Madame’s trunk. Here was at least a beginning. He would surely be able to sell them for two or three hundred francs, a sum of money sufficient to give Julienne a trousseau of the finest. The headwaiter would see—he would admire—he would wonder—he would say to himself that a man who could spend so much money on a trousseau had doubtless a tidy fortune saved up somewhere, and since he seemed too stingy to give a fair share of it to his daughter as dowry there was always hope for the future.

He would cultivate a racking cough—complain about his heart—allude to his fear that he was not long for this world—

Ah!—there was still hope. Julienne would yet become Madame Hector Epernan, and there would be an end to the regrettable scenes with the little Claire in the matter of shoes at twelve francs a pair.

“V'lá les dos, viv'nt les dos!
C’est les dos les gros,
Les beaux—”

gaily hummed Paul Lebel as he hurried up to the garret, where he found the trunk amidst a dusty litter of broken furniture, and opened the rusty, creaking lock.

The lid swung up and he paused momentarily. This was the first time since his wife’s death that he had opened her trunk, and an aroma rose from it—slightly musty, but still sweet—ambered lavender and verbena: the scents which she had loved and used.

Again a warm wave of sentiment surged through Monsieur Paul Lebel. He came near to closing the trunk without searching for the jewels. Then his common sense boomed up massively. There was Julienne. There was Hector Epernan. And there was Claire!—and he groped in the top tray, with a faint rustling and swishing and crackling as his fingers swept through the mass of crushed silk and linen and ribbons and presently he found what he was after: a little box filled to the brim with a shimmering, glittering, coiled mass of many colors—gold and red and white and yellow and blue.

III

Five minutes later, he was facing old Monsieur Isidore Carcassonne in his little jewelry shop of the Rue Pirouette.

He threw the gleaming lot on the counter.

“How much, Père Isidore?” he asked, with a happy smile.

Slowly Isidore Carcassonne inserted his magnifying glass in his right eye.

He picked up the baubles one by one, examined them, looked at his customer, examined them again without saying a word and reached for scale and pincers and acid bottle to make certain tests; then he called to his assistant, who was working in the back of the shop, talked to him at length and in a whisper, and finally asked Lebel where he had got the jewels.

“Why, Père Isidore,” replied Lebel, “they belonged to the late Madame Lebel. She had the devil’s own hankering for these bits of colored glass—”

“Colored glass?” cut in Carcassonne. “Why, mon pauvre petit—these are genuine! Every one of them!” and when Lebel, deathly pale, clutched the edge of the counter for support and seemed unable to pronounce a single word, the other continued vehemently, “Yes—they are genuine—and I offer you ... wait”—he talked again to his clerk, picked up the jewels, held them to the light, measured and weighed and figured and re-figured—“fifty thousand francs!” he exclaimed suddenly, “not a centime more—and you must give me until Saturday to raise the money!”

Lebel sucked in his breath.

There was a dry rasp at the back of his throat.

Fifty thousand francs!—he understood at once.

His wife—the late respected Madame—she ... ah—these things had been presents, doubtless from some rich man—she ...

He picked up the glistening mass—the color-shouting facets seemed to mock him, to jeer at him. He was about to crush them—to throw them away—and then again, as from a great distance, he heard Isidore Carcassonne’s creaking voice—“fifty thousand francs! Not another centime!”—and, quite suddenly, he smiled. God be praised, he thought, he was a man of stout, solid common sense—and Madame was dead, and he was alive! And so was Julienne—and Hector Epernan—and Claire, the little black-haired Claire.

There was the future.

“Good!” he turned to Carcassonne, “fifty thousand francs—I accept—but wait, wait!” he picked up a beautiful ring, a double snake with two cabochon emeralds. “I shall keep this ring for myself—there are—ah—sentimental memories connected with it!”—and, after some haggling, Isidore Carcassonne agreed and gave Monsieur Lebel a receipt for the jewels, asking him to come Saturday for the money.

Lebel left the shop, and, humming to himself, with a youthful, springy step, he swung down the street.

Arrived at the corner, he took the ring from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it.

That little black-haired Claire, he thought—always had she wanted a beautiful ring. She would be happy and grateful: She would kiss him. She would call him her little cream-puff, and her little fat adored doggie-doggie—and ...

“Scrognieugnieu!” thought Monsieur Lebel, wafting a tender kiss in the direction of Heaven, the late Madame!—she had been so clever and sharp and keen. She had helped him during life—and now she helped him even beyond the grave!

And happy, smiling, Monsieur Lebel hailed a passing cab and asked the driver to hurry—“Number Fifteen, Rue de la Grande Truanderie!”

Bon sang!—he was rich—he could afford to loll about in cabs!—and, as the wheels carried him toward the tiny, perfumed nest of plump little Claire Devereux, he thought gratefully of his wife—the late, lamented Madame Lebel.