Lion's Courage
I
FRESH from the nearest approach to a bath that he ever allowed himself, Monsieur Eugène Danou pulled his woolen undervest, still warm from a recent night’s use, again over his head, stretched toward the foot of the bed where hung his trousers, and so progressed from stage to stage, until his mirror and an habitual feeling of correctness indicated the practical completion of a careful and unhurried toilet.
He then shook a little brilliantine into his hand, rubbed the palms together, and devoted two minutes to the violent friction of his rather scanty, graying hair. This done, he plied comb and brush with care, flicked a suspicion of dandruff from the shoulders of his shiny black coat, and, striding across the small bedroom, flung open the casement window.
The freshness of a bright May morning in this pleasant suburb of Paris had its effect on the impressionable little commercial traveler, and his rising spirits found outlet in a gay snatch of tune. He accepted his unaccustomed cheerfulness as a favorable omen, and stood for a little, breathing the fine air and watching the approaching paperboy follow a leisurely and erratic course along the street.
For the first time in his twenty years’ experience of the Road, M. Danou was without a situation. Nor was he suffering for any fault of his own. When it came to selling gentlemen’s hats, it was admitted that, despite a vague timidity of manner (the peeping skeleton in an otherwise perfect cupboard), the quiet little hard-working traveler was without a rival. His employers, expert character-readers, had hesitated before promoting him to the position of head salesman; but a fuller sense of his own importance seemed to fill M. Danou from that moment, and they never had reason to regret their decision. In his selling, indeed, appeared occasional flashes of brilliance. He took daring chances for his firm, and was consistently successful; more than once he displayed a boldness that astonished his rivals.
‘Success has been the making of our little Danou,’ his fellow travelers would whisper behind their hands of an evening in the small-town commercial hotels; ‘since he has become chief représentant for Monod Frères he is bold as a lion.’
And Danou, whose hearing was good, caught the sense of these remarks in his corner before the fire, and swelled inwardly with gratification.
‘The lion’s boldness is bluff; he is a coward at heart,’ muttered an old man once on the opposite side of the chimney. His words were, however, lost in the general noise of the talk, and M. Danou retired early, the compliment still ringing in his cars. During the night suggestion did its work, and when he awoke, the lion was bolder than before.
One day a friend sat in a railway carriage listening to M. Danou’s tale of a recent daring coup. ‘And what would have happened had you been unsuccessful?’ queried the friend.
‘My firm would have lost some fifty thousand francs,’ replied their représentant, not without pride.
‘And you — would you have lost your situation?’
M. Danou thought for a moment; then he gave a little shrug. ‘It is a thing I have not considered,’ he replied briefly, and changed the subject.
A chance question in a railway carriage —
Maria, his wife, noticed the change within five minutes of his home-coming the following Friday. She was almost the only person who realized his weakness, and it had been her especial care for years to watch over him, lending him her strength when he required it. From this day forward she redoubled her efforts.
Learning by a few keen questions the reason of his sudden malaise, she at once set about her task of reassuring him. She dwelt upon his great experience, his wonderful successes. She argued with the skill of a lawyer, the conviction of a fanatic, the intensity of her love. She named him half a dozen firms who would jump at the chance of his services should the occasion arise, and eventually she succeeded — succeeded, that is, in restoring his self-confidence as a salesman. What might lie beyond, it was fortunately unnecessary for her to consider.
When M. Danou returned home one gray evening in March, he brought the news that MM. Lefèvre et Cie., of Nancy, one of the most important hatmaking establishments in France, had closed its doors. Maria watched him carefully as he sat after supper smoking before the fire. The serving-girl had washed up the dishes and gone home. It was an hour when they generally talked together of the day’s happenings, or, if M. Danou had been away, gave one another a survey of their week’s events.
This evening he was unusually silent, and when it came to nine o’clock, rose and fetched his boots. ‘I think I ‘ll go along as far as the station,’ he remarked; ‘the late paper ought to be in by now.’
There was only a short paragraph about the failure. As they already knew, it was due to the slump following the war boom, coupled with reviving competition from abroad. M. Danou took a serious view of the situation. ‘There will be more to follow,’ he prophesied, shaking his head; and for once all Maria’s efforts to reassure him were unsuccessful. That night they both went to bed depressed: a fortnight later the old-established firm of Monod Frères discharged its three hundred employees, and followed its rival into liquidation.
In face of this unparalleled situation, M. Danou almost went to pieces. The nightmare of his life had become a reality; for with every firm in France cutting down staffs and reducing expenditure, the chance of finding employment for months, and possibly years, to come, appeared hopeless.
‘How,’ he kept asking, ‘can a man, already past middle age and with his knowledge and experience so specialized, adopt any other line of business than his own?’
As for traveling salesmen — they were clamoring for work by the hundred in the columns of every newspaper he took up; and as day followed unsuccessful day, and he trailed home in the evening, weary and hopeless from his fruitless seeking, even Maria at last began to look grave.
During the first week it had been bearable. When she met him at the station, as she made a point of doing when she knew the hour of his train, he would smile and joke, and ask her how she liked being among the unemployed. The knowledge that they would not immediately starve was a comfort for which he learned to thank Our Lady with greater fervency every day; and the few hundred francs a month which the revenue of his wife’s untouched dot assured them certainly kept him from a premature despair. But there was hardly more than would keep body and soul together, and the need for finding a situation grew daily more pressing.
During the second week of unemployment, he ceased to joke; at the end of the second month, he was wallowing in gloom. ‘Je ne suis bon à rien,’ he would mutter over and over to himself while she was washing up the supper things; ‘I am good for nothing, nobody wants me; it is finished.’
When the dishes were dry and piled in place in the old-fashioned buffet, she would draw her chair close to his and take his hand; and while she stroked it like a child’s, little by little her influence would gain upon him. Generally she let him do the talking first; then, when he was wearied, she had her turn, sympathizing, reassuring, comforting. They spoke of old times, of his long and successful career, and a hundred little triumphs.
Then, with a bravery he never imagined, she turned to the future; and as she talked, he caught the spirit of her optimism. And there was a future for them yet — she knew it, if only her work of years would bear the test. She strove as never before to save what still remained as the fruit of her labors; and each night, when bedtime came, she found her Eugène again grown almost cheerful. But her triumphs were, as a rule, pitifully shortlived. His self-confidence had a habit of draining away in the night, and he would awake each morning, despite her, to the hopeless darkness of the day before.
II
This morning was a notable exception. Could it be the swallows, swaying and chirruping on the telephone wires, or that cheery rascal of a paper-boy whistling his careless way out of sight? M. Danou’s own little song changed to a whistle as he turned to wish his wife good-morning: such sleepy interchange of words as might take place on their awakening was never considered in the nature of a formal greeting.
His beloved Maria, short and wellcovered, entered smiling from the kitchen. She seemed indifferent to the dirtiness of her yellow dressing-gown, and the numerous strands of chestnut hair that straggled untidily over her ample forehead. She would have cared as little had she realized the greasy smudge disfiguring an otherwise rosy cheek; for, although Parisian-born, — or perhaps because of it, — she considered that nothing should be allowed to interfere with the work to be done. Later, she would dress and powder with the best; but that would be in the afternoon, when the house was dusted and the remains of her midday meal had disappeared. In the morning she had more important things in hand.
‘The newspaper, Eugène! Say now, there will perhaps be something to-day. But you must read it while you are drinking your chocolate: if we do not take our breakfast at once, I shall never have the time to go along to the market.’
M. Danou, his favorite Petit Parisien in his hand, followed his wife into the small kitchen, where two cups of chocolate were already cooling, set out on a piece of oilcloth at one end of the table. Maria produced the long loaf of crusty bread left by the baker’s boy an hour before, and with neither butter nor jam to color the meal, they began to eat.
Disregarding the news, the little man munched and drank in silence, while his eyes were running with the speed of custom from one likely advertisement to another. The ‘Situations Vacant’ column was not a long one that morning in the Petit Parisien, and he was nearing the bottom of a seemingly hopeless list, when —
Suddenly the honest little man’s heart missed a beat. Enfin! There it was at last! But was it? He must make certain — Yes, indeed —
M. Danou forgot his very first rule of good society: ‘Maiah! Maiah, — oo!’ he exploded in the middle of an enormous mouthful of crusty bread. A gulp of chocolate helped to render him coherent: then in an excited voice, a trembling finger to guide him, he read off his find.
‘ Voilà, Maria! There is my affair! Who would have thought to discover it to-day? and in the journal? Ah, and we have searched so long! I know the Maison Barthélmy in the Boulevard de Nlmes: they are a serious firm, who pay well their employees. M. Barthélmy, the principal, is a shrewd man, but bears a good reputation. If only I can manage to arrive before it is too late — ‘
‘But it is perfect!’ His wife had risen, and now leaned over the table by his side, her arm through his, to read the magic words.
‘“Head traveler . . . push the sale of gentlemen’s hats.” It ‘s exactly what you ‘re waiting for, dearest, isn’t it? But, Eugène — why do they put “only those with absolute confidence in themselves need apply” ? I don’t think I quite like that: it sounds so — so funny.’
‘Not at all, darling — quite essential.’ His words came hastily in jerks, between mouthfuls. ‘Confidence? We travelers have to have confidence of course — never get on without — Absolute self-confidence — that’s the secret — Often have to take important decisions — might be question of a hundred thousand francs one day. Thank God at least I ‘ve never suffered from nerves.’
And a moment after, ‘For goodness’ sake, hurry up with these boots, Maria;
I know you ‘re going to make me miss my train.’
An hour later a little man, neatly but quietly dressed, entered M. Barthélmy’s private office on the Boulevard de Nîmes. Behind the counter a girl sat, typing. She glanced at his card. ‘If you’ve come about the advertisement,’ she said, ‘M. Barthélmy can’t see you till four o’clock.’
‘My business is with your employer, mademoiselle, and not with you. Will you kindly tell him I am here?’
‘Is it about the advertisement?’
M. Danou interested himself in a calendar on the wall, and made no reply.
With an angry glance that was entirely wasted upon him, the girl rose from her chair and pushed open a heavy door in the rear of the office. Hardly had she disappeared, before M. Danou had taken four swift strides round the counter. The inner-office door was not yet closed when it was opening again before him.
‘Did n’t he tell you his business?’ The short wiry man with the pointed gray beard and searching eyes was tapping his desk irritably with the corner of M. Danou’s card. He swung round sharply at the interruption.
‘And what do you mean, monsieur, by coming in here without my permission?’
Briefly M. Danou explained his visit. ‘My twenty years’ experience on the road,’ he added, ‘has taught me to walk straight in when occasion demands. It has also taught me to arrive before the crowd. If I have annoyed you, I demand your pardon; but you see my business methods in operation — and at least you will hardly deny that I am here.’
He took out a colored handkerchief and mopped his brow. The first round was his; had M. Barthélmy decided to turn him into the street without consideration, he would not continue to sit and study him as he was doing. This little success gave him just the fillip he required. The whole world seemed now at his feet if only he conducted himself carefully, and he found himself thinking back with amazement upon his recent long periods of depression.
‘Will you give yourself the trouble of sitting down?’
In the outer office began the tap-taptap of the young girl’s typewriter; here, the atmosphere was different, and very peaceful. Double windows, tightly closed, cut off the noises of the busy boulevard; heavy curtains and other wall hangings seemed to deaden even the ticking of the large ormolu clock, set over the fireplace, below which a mass of glowing boulets sufficiently explained the oppressiveness of the atmosphere.
Although the furniture was a mixture of antique and modern, there was no suspicion of out-of-date-ness in the general effect; and if the principal of the firm himself appeared to belong to the preceding generation, it was only as long as he remained silent and absorbed. The penetration of his eyes and voice amazed M. Danou: they were almost sinister.
‘Yes,’ resumed M. Barthélmy slowly after a few moments’ scrutiny of the intruder, ‘yes, you are here. Do you smoke, monsieur? Accept a cigarette. And your credentials?’
Cursorily he glanced through the papers produced. He appeared more interested in observing the subject of them sitting before him, and while M. Danou chose a cigarette and proceeded to light it, followed attentively his every gesture. He noted the careless flick of match on box, the moment’s guarding of the flame, the sudden glow of the closely-packed tobacco. M. Danou smoked rapidly, inhaling sharply and blowing out the pale blue clouds one upon another in quick succession.
M. Barthélmy handed back the reference. ‘ It is easy to light a cigarette when one uses the Swedish matches, monsieur,’ he observed.
The other took a couple of quick puffs. ‘My faith, yes; I have never known them to fail. A pipe is sometimes difficult in the wind, but a cigarette ‘ — he waved his hand, ‘ so simple! ‘
‘Yes — It is largely a matter of confidence, is it not? You know how we all of us feel when we have but one match that remains. Remember the care with which we rub the tip — how easily the stem may break — how small a breath extinguishes the flame.’
M. Danou glanced quickly at the speaker. ‘A salesman has little time for nerves, monsieur,’he replied shortly.
‘ And you ? ‘
‘I flatter myself — ‘ He jerked off the first long ash into the waste-paper basket, and sat back in his chair puzzled. He seemed to have lost, all of a sudden, the helm of this interview. Where, exactly, were they drifting?
M. Barthélmy remained silent.
‘You have seen from my papers, monsieur, that as a salesman I have given satisfaction. Do I gather that the qualities you most demand are confidence and experience? And if that is so, is there any way in which I may satisfy you?’
He took three more quick pulls at his cigarette, but this time failed to displace the still-glowing ash.
M. Barthé1my cleared his throat. ‘As to your experience, I am satisfied. That you can fulfill my requirements, provided you have the necessary selfconfidence, I have little doubt; but in this, my demands are above the average — and precise. I propose, with your agreement, to try a little experiment that has just occurred to me. It deals with just this point, and the result should be interesting. You permit?’
He placed his elbows on the desk, and allowed the tips of his thin, white fingers to rest lightly together.
M. Danou bowed.
‘You will not, then, consider it an impertinence if I put to you rather a personal question.’ He paused. ‘You have, possibly, — er, — certain private moneys, monsieur? Savings, perhaps, on which you are living at present — a legacy from some dead relative?’
‘There is my wife’s dot,’ said M. Danou.
‘Exactly! The only barrier between yourself and starvation — am I not right? the thing above all others that you fear to lose?’
The other nodded.
‘You smoke quickly, monsieur.’ M. Danou’s cigarette was more than half consumed. ‘Is it because they are such simple things to light, that you smoke your cigarettes so quickly?’
M. Danou, utterly befogged, laughed nervously.
‘This is my proposition.’ A harder note crept into M. Barthélmy’s voice. He continued: ‘ When you have finished this cigarette — no, no! smoke it to the end, I beg of you! — you will choose another, from my case or from your own, as you prefer. From your box you will select one match. If you succeed, monsieur, in lighting your cigarette with the single match, you will have this situation; and my terms, you will find, are generous.’
He stopped. M. Danou waited a moment for him to continue; then, with a quick motion, threw his glowing stump into the fire, where it caught and burned up in a flash of yellow.
‘Is that your only condition?’ He had seized the first cigarette his fingers touched in the other man’s case, and was already selecting a match.
‘Not quite! You will remark that, if it were, you would have everything to gain by success, while in failing you would be losing nothing — nothing, that is, that belongs to you already. I can gauge a man’s self-confidence by what he will stake on his success. By the way, I assume that you control this money of your wife’s? Good! I make, then, this condition: you will give me your word of honor, in the presence of my typist, that, if you attempt my little experiment and fail, you will pay over to myself the full amount of your wife’s dot, whatever that may be. That is my only condition. Have I made myself plain?’
He sat back, a little smile of irony twisting the pale lips, half-hidden by his moustache.
M. Danou deliberately laid down match and cigarette upon the desk. ‘If I fail — ‘ he began slowly.
‘And I happen to know that you will fail.’
From outside, the muffled sounds of thronging traffic scarcely reached them. One huge vehicle, lumbering on its way, shook the glass in the windows and passed into the distance. Even from the chimneypiece the faint ticking of the clock was hardly audible while the two men eyed one another across the broad desk.
‘ You happen to know—’
‘That you will fail.’
A full minute passed while neither moved. Suddenly from within the clock came a sharp rattle. M. Danou jumped: ‘Fetch her in !’ he snapped. He reached forward for the cigarette again, and as he examined it, his fingers were trembling.
The girl, summoned from her typing by the pressure of a button, quietly entered and stood by the door.
‘Are you ready?’
The matches from the box were now scattered over the desk, and he was nervously examining each in turn.
‘A moment, while I explain!’
In a few words M. Barthélmy had put the situation before his secretary. Wide-eyed, she nodded her understanding.
‘And now,’ he continued turning to M. Danou, ‘you will give the required assurance to this lady and myself. Repeat these words: “ I promise — ”’
M. Danou was choosing and rejecting match after match. His hands were shaking now so that he could scarcely pick them up. When he tried to speak, he made a husky sound in his throat, and had to swallow twice before he succeeded. ‘I promise — ‘ he repeated, word after word to the end.
Another pause: the atmosphere itself seemed strung to breaking-point.
‘All ready,’ said M. Barthélmy, leaning forward. Selecting one of the cigarettes himself, he picked up the match nearest to him — ignited it with a careless sweep on the side of the box. The next moment he was inhaling deeply.
For the space of several seconds M. Danou gazed at him, fascinated; then with a decisive movement forced his own cigarette between dry lips, grasped the box in his left hand, and snatched up a match. The safety-head was quivering on the striking surface: all he wanted was just to flick it along — only — to — flick — it — along — ‘But you will fail — ‘
It was like Maria’s sob as the girl caught her breath.
With a sudden cry the little man was on his feet. Behind him, his chair crashed to the floor: match and box flew wildly toward the fire.
‘Mon dieu! mon dieu! What am I doing? Maria! Maria!’
Next morning a charwoman, sweeping out an office in the Boulevard de Nîmes, discovered an unsmoked cigarette beneath the broad desk, where it must have rolled unnoticed. ‘It is well,’ she said, ‘my husband will be glad of this’; and she slipped it among the contents of her capacious pocket.