The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron

Thirty-Three

376 Thirty-Three all that nicolas was certain of, as he stood once more in the street, was that the head had not denied that Damas lodged there, behind that closed door. a succession of closed doors, a succession of postponements, of disappointments, of being sent from one person to another, acquiring from each person a new hope and a new reason for grief, for uncertainty—the day which had begun with such high anticipation had become a waking nightmare. what should he do now? Must he wait until morning to find Paul, to speak to his mother, to free himself of this last torturing uncertainty? he began to walk with no sense of any objective, a mere stirring of the limbs to keep from going numb. he was aware irrelevantly of touches of dampness on his face and about his temples. his head was bare. he did not know where he had left his hat, whether at the Golden harrow, or at the executioner’s, or at the abbé’s, or even at the shop in the rue de la vieille Bouclerie. he summoned a distinct recollection of taking off his hat before entering the room where Sanson sat at table. his mind went blank when he tried to remember his leaving the abbé. if he had broken in on the card players hatless and breathless, he must have seemed sufficiently ill mannered to provoke hostility. why else should the young woman have wanted to fling his 377 T H E G H O S T O F M O N S I E U R S C A R R O N mother’s shame at him in such malice? Plunging ahead half blindly down one street after another, he realized with horror that he had already accepted all her implications as the truth. he struggled against this acceptance, but it was too late. the image had become fixed in his mind. his revulsion was no less, but his desire to see his mother was stronger than ever. if only to reproach her, he must see her. he had gone by habit toward the river and then along the quais in the direction of the Quartier St.-Paul. when he reached the Pont de la tournelle, he awoke from his daze, and knew where he was but had no memory of how he got there. at that moment he decided that he could not wait until morning to see his mother; he would return to the house where she lodged in infamy with Paul, and he would sit upon the step outside their door until they returned from wherever it was that they were spending their evening. he wondered then what the hour was. it was past curfew. Beneath the windows of houses which were barred and shuttered at the street level he heard the tones of a viol and a flute in a gay and strongly measured music. the cabarets were closed officially, but behind their darkened fronts business went on as usual to a much later hour. in some bistro Paul and his mother sat drinking, perhaps. he searched his memory for the haunts of the journeymen of the rue St.-Jacques in the days when he had been a prentice. he remembered the coffeehouse near St.-Paul’s Churchyard, and the memory brought him a renewal of his loss in the death of Monsieur Bouquet. the sense of guilt at his long absence from home, the superstitious sense that the death of his friend foreshadowed the death of his father, confirmed now, merged with his resentment at the betrayal of his father by his mother and by that journeyman assistant whom 378 Janet Lewis he had himself brought to the rue des lions. he did not debate whether his mother had the right to marry again. She had not the right to marry Paul. he crossed to the Cité, having remembered a cabaret which had been most popular. he found the place and stood outside the door, trying to think how the two people he sought might be behind that door, and how he would confront them. But there would be other people, also. he could not bear the thought of other faces, other queries and explanations, if by chance the two people he sought should not be there. he turned away, guarding his solitude. at the entrance to the rue Dauphine he...