Chapter Fourteen
Rather a Strange Pair
A/N: These two honestly couldn't be more suss and it's giving me anxiety. Also I hate how many times I'm going to have to refer to this lady as the "proprietress" but we're in limited third person, Éponine's POV and she doesn't know the lady's name so there we are. Let's just try to get through this scene, lol.
Éponine was whisked away behind a screen, where she had to step up on a little pedestal so that she could be measured. One of the seamstresses measured her while the proprietress stood and watched with arms folded and eyes narrowed. She glanced around the screen, evidently to ensure that Erik was a safe distance away. Éponine noted with satisfaction that the lady was a little bit afraid of him now.
With her voice somewhat lowered, she addressed Éponine: "Your husband's mask. What's that all about?"
"You mustn't ask him about it," Éponine said. "He gets very upset."
"I'm not asking him. I'm asking you."
"An accident. It's none of your concern." Éponine raised her chin imperiously, grateful for the additional height the little platform gave her. At that very moment, the seamstress lifted her arm out to the side to measure it, which caused Éponine to cry out in pain, because she still had a lot of soreness and tenderness there.
The nosy eyes of the proprietress landed on Éponine's still-bandaged hand. "And that?"
"An—accident," Éponine repeated, somewhat hesitantly. She really wanted to get out of here. She and Erik made too odd a pair to be out in public like this, and he had to choose a shop with the nosiest possible woman presiding over it.
"Hmm." If she narrowed her eyes any further, they would be closed.
As the seamstress measured, she jotted down brief notations which Éponine could not decipher. The proprietress laid out one of the dresses on a nearby counter, and she measured that. She then eyed the measurements the seamstress had written down, and looked sharply at Éponine. "Ah. So you got shorter, while you were ill."
Despite the accusing tone, there was no actual question there demanding an answer, so Éponine just chose not to respond.
They had to have her remove her dress and ill-fitting corset so they could take measurements for the proper one. Which meant they were probably going to see the bandages that still swathed her chest, visible above the neckline of the chemise. As she always did when she was nervous, Éponine started prattling.
"This is really a very nice shop, Madame. Have you been here long? You must meet so many interesting people. My family used to be inn-keepers and we met a good many interesting—well, not too interesting," Éponine cursed herself—she'd been trying to pass herself off as perfectly bourgeois, and she had probably just blown it. "It was a very respectable sort of inn. That was before I met my husband, of course, and—"
"What happened there?" the formidable lady asked sharply.
The seamstress had unfastened the back of her dress and pushed it off of her shoulders so that it fell forwards and down. Across from her, in a mirror, Éponine could plainly see her bandages showing above the corset and chemise.
"I..." Éponine had an idea then. An idea to explain all of it. The words tumbled out of her mouth as fast as she could think them. "The 5th of June, when there was all of that dreadful fighting in the streets. We were trying to get home from having dinner with friends. I insisted on walking—I always like a bit of healthy exercise. Well, we didn't know anything about what was going on—it was so silly of us. We had to walk through Les Halles, and we found barricades everywhere! We soon found ourselves trapped! We had to take shelter where we could find it. Musket-fire all around us. And then I was hit. Right here," Éponine traced her finger around where the musket ball truly had hit her—the only accurate part of this whole story. "And my husband, he thought of nothing but getting me to a doctor. So he picked me up and just started to run. And then there was an explosion. A cannon went off! My husband—his face is all scarred now."
"Oh, dreadful! Those murderers!" Éponine was startled by the woman's voice on the other side of the screen. "Extremists. Thank heaven order has been restored once again. Vive le Roi!"
The proprietress gave Éponine a knowing look. There was some kind of fire crackling in her eyes, and Éponine's stomach dropped. She didn't know what the look meant, but she guessed the lady had not bought her story. But rather than say anything to Éponine, she peered around the screen and addressed the woman who had spoken. "Yes, quite right, Madame Beaufoy! And I'll be with you in just one moment. You are going to be so pleased when you see that new dress."
The seamstress removed Éponine's corset, and neither she nor the proprietress commented on the fact that she had stuffed the corset with stockings to round it out. That, at least, could potentially fit with Erik's story that she had been ill and lost weight, even though the fact that the dress that was clearly made for a taller person to begin with did not.
Finished with her measurements, the seamstress helped Éponine get her dress back on and she walked away with her notes and the dresses to be altered. The proprietress was still looking at Éponine with that frightening expression. There was almost a fervour in her eyes. Éponine stepped down from the little platform, and the lady stepped quite close to her, close enough that Éponine could smell her perfume. She gave Éponine's arm a rapturous squeeze, and into her ear, she whispered, "Liberté ou la Mort." She backed away. Her eyes were wet, and she gave Éponine a quick and knowing smile before resuming a look of imperious disdain, and turning and walking out of the little space created by the screen. "Thank you for your patience, Madam Beaufoy. Now, let's see your new dress..."
Éponine stood there a moment, bewildered, before she remembered seeing that phrase on a red flag. Oh, she realised: not only had the lady not bought her story of being there by mistake, but she must have been in favour of what the students did—or tried to do. Éponine felt a little sting of shame. Because the cause she had nearly died for had been Monsieur Marius, and Monsieur Marius alone. The golden-haired one—Enjolras, they had called him—he had said things that seemed to move and invigorate everyone else there, but Éponine had not been listening. Her eyes and ears were on Monsieur Marius, whose mind and heart, she could plainly see, were also elsewhere. Although he had been very heroic to do what he did with the powder keg, and these were his friends and he must have supported their cause, he was thinking only of Cosette, who, thanks to Éponine, he thought was gone far away to England without even leaving word. His cause was wishing to die, and Éponine's cause was him.
But there had been something else at that barricade. It had stood for something else, something that made this stony-faced woman get tears in her eyes. Éponine wished she knew more about it, but judging by the way the woman had whispered in her ear, she gathered it was not something to be discussed openly anymore.
She went back around the screen to join Erik. He was standing near the front of the shop, watching the street through the window. Éponine slipped in beside him, entwining her arm around his. She stood up on her tip-toes to give him a peck on the cheek, but encountering his mask, she had to switch at the last second to just above his jaw.
He momentarily stared down at her with wide eyes, but quickly recovered himself. "All finished, my dear?"
She nodded, glancing down to try to conceal the deep blush coming over her cheeks. She might have gone a step too far there. But it was his fault for not just saying she was his younger sister, or niece, or really anything else. When she turned around, it seemed all the seamstresses had paused their work and were staring at them, but they quickly ducked their heads and got back to it. They must think it very strange, this frightening masked man and his bandaged-up, waifish wife swimming in her too-large, too-long dress.
After the other customer left, they finished their business and arranged to pick up the clothes in a week's time. As they were about to depart, the proprietress stepped close to Erik, and in a lowered voice, said: "The people will not forget, Monsieur. It will not have been in vain."
Erik's face betrayed no confusion, though he did glance quickly at Éponine. "Thank you, Madame," he said, and, offering Éponine his arm, they left.
"What was that about?" He asked, as soon as they were clear of the shop.
"I had to give her a story about my bandages." Éponine filled him in on the details of her story. "But I could tell she didn't believe me. She thinks we both fought in the barricades." And then, remembering, Éponine swatted his arm. "And I could ask you the same question!"
"What?"
"Your wife?"
"Well, you made it quite clear that you weren't going to be my mistress, despite the fact that the position was never opened," he said dryly.
"Let's hurry back so we can eat," Éponine said, changing the subject. She had been hungry when she had first woken up, and she was past hungry now.
"Perhaps we could go and eat at a restaurant?"
Éponine bit her lip. "I'm very tired, but also, I think we stick out a little too much."
"Because of my mask," he said, somewhat sadly.
She shook her head quickly. "No—well, yes, I suppose. But I wasn't thinking about your mask. I was thinking about me."
Erik looked at her in surprise.
"I don't belong in places like that." She laughed, but the laugh was much more dismal than she intended. "And to be wearing a dress that doesn't fit me only makes it more obvious."
"We do make rather a strange pair, don't we? The house on the lake it is, then. We will be far more comfortable there."
As he was helping her into a fiacre, Éponine saw someone standing in an alleyway, swathed in shadows so that she couldn't tell who it was. But the man—she could tell it was a man—appeared to be watching them. Then, the figure vanished into the shadows.
A/N: Éponine's fake story of how she got wounded is kind of loosely based on the real story of how Victor Hugo ended up wandering unwittingly into the barricades, with no idea of what was going on.
I don't know why, I just thought it would be interesting for this lady to turn out to be sympathetic to the revolutionaries, and I went with it. Maybe someone she loved was there, who knows. But I like it when barely significant characters have some glimpses of depth.
