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That same day Thomas, after leaving the works and while threading his way through the toilsome hive-like Marcadet district, had overtaken Madame Theodore and little Celine, who were wandering on in great distress. It appeared that they had just called upon Toussaint, who had been unable to lend them even such a trifle as ten sous.
Even the dilemmas and distresses, when they asserted themselves, were more or less overswept, as if for the sake of decency, by billows of spotted muslin, with which Celine, who felt the romance of the situation, made herself marvellously clever. Celine, indeed, was worth in this exigency many times her wages.
One, in writing, was a telegram to be sent to Lucian Davlin. The other was a verbal message to be delivered, in some way, to Mr. Percy before he quitted the grounds of Oakley. Pausing at a safe distance from the house, Céline produced from her pocket some waxen matches. She lighted one, having looked cautiously about her, and spreading open the telegram to Mr.
She alluded presently to her preposterously-named daughters, Brynhild, Melissa and Guendolen, and he was reminded of a French family of musicians with whom he had travelled on the steamer between Rio and Sao Paulo, a double-chinned swarthy Madame and her three daughters, Céline, Roxane and Juliette, who sat about on deck nursing musical instruments tied with grubby scarlet ribbons, silent and dispirited, as though they were so addicted to public appearance that they found their private hours an embarrassment.
Eh! la mere! what tricks are you up to now?" "Tricks? I don't understand!" she said quietly, for she was not afraid. The passport was en regle: she knew she had nothing to fear. "Oh! but I think you do!" retorted the official with a sneer, "and 'tis a mighty clever one, I'll allow. Celine Dumont, ma foi!
Devoted and silent as she was, one glance at her mistress' face told her that trouble grave and imminent had reached Blakeney Manor. Marguerite, whilst Lucie undressed her, took up the passport and carefully perused the personal description of one, Celine Dumont, maid to Citizeness Desiree Candeille, which was given therein: tall, blue eyes, light hair, age about twenty-five.
"And your papa, my dear," said Pierre to Celine, "isn't he here either?" "Oh! no, monsieur, he has gone away." "What, gone away?" "Yes, he hasn't been home to sleep, and we don't know where he is." "Perhaps he's working." "Oh, no! he'd send us some money if he was." "Then he's gone on a journey, perhaps?" "I don't know." "He wrote to Mamma Theodore, no doubt?" "I don't know."
"Celine Dumont," she replied unhesitatingly, for had she not rehearsed all this in her mind dozens of times, until her tongue could rattle off the borrowed name as easily as it could her own; "servitor to Citizeness Desiree Candeille!" The man who had very carefully been examining the paper the while, placed it down on the table deliberately in front of him, and said: "Celine Dumont!
She continued talking in this spiritless, resigned way, complaining only on account of Celine; for, said she, it was enough to make one's heart break to see such an intelligent child obliged to tramp the streets after getting on so well at the Communal School. She could feel too that everybody now kept aloof from them on account of Salvat.
Arthur had been absent from the family breakfast table for two days, when Miss Arthur met with a fresh grievance at the hands of Céline. Céline had been unusually garrulous, and had been regaling her mistress with descriptions of the great people, and the magnificent toilets she had seen, while with some of her former miladis.
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