The Launching of Roger Brook (34 page)

When they had finished they all went out into the town and, leaving their companions, Quatrevaux took Roger to a small tavern nearby: on entering which he at once suggested that they should drink a bottle together on their own.

‘’Twill take us half an hour or more to dispose of a bottle,’ Roger hazarded, thinking of his extremely small store of
crowns
. ‘Will not the others become angry at being kept waiting for so long?’

‘Nay, we have ample time,’ Quatrevaux shrugged. ‘’Tis perhaps some excuse for the way they bolt their food that on weekdays after supper is our only time of recreation. All of us have a tryst with some wench most evenings, but must be in by ten, as Brochard locks up at that hour and has a dozen unpleasant ways of taking it out of late-comers. ’Tis on that account we are forced to celebrate by taking bottles up to our room; but you can depend upon it that none of them will be back before St. Pierre’s bells have begun their chiming.’

‘In that case what wine will you drink?’ asked Roger, endeavouring to hide his anxiety as to whether his funds would run to this evening’s entertainment.

To his relief his new friend answered: ‘They have a good
Chateau Neuf du Pape
here that is not expensive, and for the wine we are to take back the
Vin Ordinaire
will serve. Those clowns have no palates for a good vintage. They scarce know one wine from another and require only something upon which they can sozzle themselves.’

At a table in one of a line of partitioned recesses they enjoyed their bottle and, meanwhile, Quatrevaux gave Roger quite a lot of information about Maître Léger’s household. The lawyer himself was a shrewd man and a not unkindly master. His wife, as Roger no doubt knew, was much younger than himself, a pretty creature and a born coquette. Old Fusier knew his law but otherwise was a dotard and rarely interfered with anybody. Brochard, who aspired to a partnership, really ran the place. He was both clever and exacting. His only interest outside the firm was politics. He was a reformer of the most rabid type and if
the present discontents ever came to a head would prove dangerous. Douie, the third apprentice, on the other hand, was deeply religious, and the Church still wielded immense power in Brittany. He, Quatrevaux, was not himself a Breton; he hailed from Provence. As Brochard was a freethinker he and Douie often had terrific arguments.

As the catalogue went on Roger gathered that these two were, apart from Maître Léger, the only serious people in the house. The others either lived the lives of cabbages or were solely concerned with a succession of ever-changing love affairs.

‘How is it that you have no tryst tonight?’ Roger inquired, after he had listened to Quatrevaux’s revelations about several of his colleagues’ illicit amours, made with evident approval.

The handsome young Provençal gave him a sly look. ‘You have not met Manon Prudhot yet, have you? She is a niece of Maître Léger’s, and keeps house for him in Madame’s absence. She is a Parisien and infinitely superior to these little Rennes trollops with whom the others amuse themselves. Why should I go outside the house when such good fare is to be had within it?’

As the clock struck the quarter they collected the six bottles of
Vin Ordinaire
, which to Roger’s relief cost only half a
franc
a-piece, and carried them back to their lodging. A few minutes later the rest of the apprentices began to arrive, pewter mugs were produced, the corks of the bottles were drawn and the small company settled down on their beds to toast Roger’s initiation.

For some time the talk was general, with many allusions to the other inmates of the house and various girls of the town, which meant nothing to Roger; but then they began to ask him again about himself and he had to call largely upon his powers of invention.

From the crosstalk that ensued he soon discovered that they were just primitive and boorish rather than malicious, and that, apart from Quatrevaux, he already knew far more of the world than all of them put together. They had all been brought up in a narrow parochial surroundings; none of them had ever been in a town larger than Rennes and his English public school education far surpassed anything they had received at the hands of Catholic priests in small town colleges.

By the time five out of six bottles had been consumed he knew that he had created something of an impression and that they now regarded him with a certain respect, even if their admiration was somewhat offset by a grudging envy; so he felt that if he played his cards well he might be able to secure a reasonable deal from them. With a view to further enhancing his prestige he launched into an account of his sword fight with De Roubec, although retailing the affair as though it had occurred in Strasbourg and had resulted from a chance encounter with a drunken rake on the way home one night.

At first they obviously believed him to be boasting and soon began to taunt him with half-drunken sneers of derision; but, quite good-humouredly, he pulled his long sword from under his bed, displayed it to their surprised gaze and said:

‘Believe me or not as you like, but I am perfectly prepared to fight anyone here, either in a fencing school with buttoned foils or somewhere outside the town with naked steel.’

His half-playful announcement was followed by a brief, strained silence. He doubted if any of them had ever handled a sword in their lives, and felt certain that his challenge would not be accepted; but he waited with interest to see how they would take it.

After a moment the hulking Hutot spoke up for the rest:

‘I am of the people and the rapier is not for such as us; but I am strong enough to break you in half, my little man, and you would remember a good kick from me for a month afterwards. While I am here you’ll show me the respect and service due to your elders.’

Roger was quick to seize upon the point. He had known all along that he would never be able to intimidate Hutot, or overawe the others as long as they had the support of their senior; so he launched a project that he had in mind for splitting the party.

‘Monsieur Hutot,’ he said with sudden gravity. ‘Believe me, you will never find me lacking in respect to you or unwilling to oblige you in anything you may require of me. But I am sure you will agree that, since I am not an articled apprentice, I am entitled to suggest that my age should be the governing factor in whom I serve here and whom I do not.’

‘’Tis an innovation that I’ll not stand for,’ declared Douie.

‘You will hold your peace and do as you are bid,’ said Quatrevaux sharply. ‘How old are you, Breuc?’

‘Seventeen and three months,’ Roger lied, once more stretching his age to the maximum which he thought might pass as credible; yet, had he known it, he could safely have added another six months, since so impressed were they by his
savoir-faire
and comparative breadth of knowledge, they would still have believed him.

‘We celebrated Douie’s name-day towards the end of September,’ Quatrevaux remarked, ‘so he can be but seventeen and a few weeks. I am eighteen and a half, and Hutot nearly twenty.’

‘Very well, then,’ said Roger. ‘I will serve you, Monsieur Quatrevaux, and Monsieur Hutot, to the best of my ability, but the other three must arrange matters among themselves.’

‘’Tis all against our custom,’ demurred Hutot.

‘And what of the cleaning of the office?’ cried little Colas angrily. ‘I’ve done it daily for eight months and thought my time was nearing its end. Yet now, the sixth bed here is occupied, Maître Léger cannot take another apprentice until Hutot leaves, and that will not be till next Whitsuntide. ’Tis unjust that I should be saddled with it for sixteen months when the normal period is something less than a year.’

For a moment it looked as though Roger’s plan for saving himself from becoming the general drudge hung again in the balance, but he said quickly:

The office work I am prepared to share with you.’ Then picking up the last bottle of wine he refilled the glasses of the two seniors and added: ‘The decision rests with you, Monsieur Hutot, but in view of my age and the fact that I am not an articled apprentice I appeal to your sense of fairness.’

Quatrevaux suddenly came to his assistance. ‘Breuc has made a good case. We are all lawyers here, and our rulings should be just ones.’

‘I’ll not start to run my own errands again,’ Douie put in suddenly, and the silent, stupid-looking Monestot nodded agreement.

‘Colas will continue to serve you two while Breuc looks
after us,’ said Quatrevaux. ‘That is fair enough, is it not, Hutot?’

The burly Hutot shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘As you will. So long as my needs are attended to without question I care not how the juniors arrange matters between themselves.’

So the question was settled and now, half befuddled by the wine they had drunk, they went to bed: Roger feeling no little pleased with himself that his skilful diplomacy had succeeded in at least reducing his new masters from five to two.

Next morning, having carried up the washing-water with Colas and helped him to clean out the office, Roger breakfasted with the others in the kitchen and, immediately afterwards, was set to work under Ruttot’s supervision on copying Latin documents.

The senior copyist was a frail looking, bespectacled fellow of about thirty-five, who suffered from an habitual and irritating cough. He was a man of no ambition, having been a copyist for the past ten years and expecting to continue as one all his life. But he was competent at his work and evidently anxious that Roger should become so, too; as he took the trouble to make out a list for him of Latin legal expressions and helped him without grumbling whenever he found himself in difficulties.

As Roger had feared, the work proved extremely monotonous and, as soon as its newness had worn off, he began to feel more than ever that Fate had played him a scurvy trick in forcing him to earn a pittance in such a manner.

He soon found, too, that although he had saved himself from becoming the slave of all his colleagues, fagging for Hutot alone was worse than anything he had endured as a new boy at Sherborne. The only interests of this coarse and powerfully built young Breton were drink and women. Brigitte, the fresh-faced cook, was his permanent stand-by, but on such nights as he did not creep down to the little room that she occupied on the ground floor, and they were many, he left the house by stealth after it had been locked up to spend the best part of the night with other girls of loose morals who lived in the neighbourhood.

His method of doing so was to lower himself by a rope from the attic window to the roof of the out-jutting kitchen and, from there, scramble down into the courtyard. But lest
the rope should be seen from one of the lower windows during his absence it had to be hauled up after his descent and lowered again on his return. This now became one of Roger’s duties and, since Hutot rarely returned till the early morning, his abettor had to sleep with a piece of string attached to his little finger, the other end of which, having been passed through the window, hung down into the yard so that Hutot could pull it as a signal that he had returned.

Roger intensely resented being violently woken three or four nights a week by a painful jerking of his hand, and even more the fact that Hutot often returned drunk, which necessitated putting him to bed and afterwards clearing up the disgusting mess he had made when he had been sick. Yet there was nothing to be done about it as, on the only occasion that he had had the temerity to protest, Hutot had knocked him down and kicked him savagely.

Another less unpleasant but irritating duty that Roger was called on to perform was, during the midday recess, to carry Hutot’s
billets-doux
to his latest conquests. As the senior apprentice was not the least particular about looks or class these ranged from washerwomen to girls who were known to be the common property of the town.

They were a coarse and vicious lot, and several of them, having made advances to Roger himself without success, then took a special delight in jeering at him as a prude and trying to make him blush by obscene remarks every time he had to visit them. Not only did he come to hate these missions but they took much of his free time that he would have otherwise employed in studying his German. He dared not let his books be seen by anyone at Maître Léger’s, so his only opportunity of getting down to them, except on Sundays, was on fine days when he could spend an hour after
déjeuner
sitting on a bench in the
Jardin des Plantes
.

Quatrevaux continued to treat him as a friend when the others were not about but, possibly through fear of losing his own prestige, was also exacting in his requirements of service. Nevertheless, his demands were much less onerous than Hutot’s and mainly consisted in buying ribbons, bonbons and other presents for Mademoiselle Manon Prudhot.

Roger met Manon occasionally, going in or out of the house or on the stairs, and he did not consider her particularly pretty; but she had a beautiful figure, dressed with
great elegance and had dark, roguish eyes. She was about twenty-two and, for those times, old not to be already married; but rumour had it that a scandal resulting from her having had an illegitimate child had hampered her chances in Paris; hence her coming to live with her uncle at Rennes. In any case, Roger knew that she could be no prude as often, when he was roused in the early hours of the morning by Hutot returning home, he saw that Quatrevaux’s bed was empty.

After three weeks of his boring and humiliating existence at Maître Léger’s Roger felt that he could not possibly bear it much longer. The thought of Athénaïs had alone sustained him so long, but he had known her for only one evening and even the indelible impression made upon him by her fairy-like yet imperious beauty was becoming slightly blunted in his memory. She would, he knew, remain his dream divinity for years to come, yet his prospects of seeing much of her in the future now seemed remote, and those of his ever being able to make her his wife, positively nil.

While pondering his unhappy state one day towards the end of October it occurred to him that it was now just on three months since he had left home. By this time his father should have been re-posted and, if despatched to a distant station, would not be back in England for another year or more. If that were the case the coast was now clear for his own return. His homecoming, it was true, would not have the glamour with which he had once hoped to invest it, but at least he could say he had succeeded in supporting himself in a foreign country for three months, which, at his age, was no small achievement. And while he was still not prepared to face his outraged father he felt that he could quite well bring himself to eat humble pie before his mother.