Thank you, again, horrendously much for the wonderful reviews. And my pathetic little reason for not writing in so long is that I have senior-year finals. However, I am profiting by the fact that IB finals are now over to finish painting this huge arachnid-spider-webby thing for an art exhibit at the theatre, to continue writing Lily Evans and the Elf-Nymph Necklace, and to, once in a while, be drawn back to this ficlet…well, it is always in an intense fit of depression that I return to this ficlet, but that is beside the point. However. Without further babbling, here is the continuation.
I seem to have this thing with the word "however". However, I fully intend to try to fix that.
Oh, holy Merlin, I'm at it again…
I interrupt this vaguely point-filled author's note to squeak happily in quite a bit of Enjolras—er, enjoyment. I got into The Scarlet Pimpernel!!! Whee!!! HA!!! Mainstage musical, summer musical, three-week-long musical, awesome costumes that I will be helping to sew…::dashes off and hugs Marius:: YAY!! (This may be my exception to the rule that I write this story whenever I'm severely depressed…)
I could not see clearly when I stood up to return to our hovel. My face was cleaner than it had been in weeks, I had cried so much. I love him. I love him, I love him, I love him. I whispered those words to myself and new tears spilled out. I cry when I think of him, and I can think of nothing else.
Before going back inside, I wiped my face on my chemise, begriming myself with Paris. My father would have the story out of me if I walked back into the room with a tear-streaked, reddened face, and I would rather die before telling him anything. There are times when I despise him, times when I admire him, times when I am disgusted by him, and times when I am afraid of them. I have never, so long as I know, been entirely indifferent to him; he is a man that one cannot ignore.
Marius. I cannot ignore him either, but then I do not want to. He is so different from my father; they might almost be from separate continents. My father: loud, boisterous, cruel, brilliant, thievish, brutally proud, lazy, gluttonous—Marius: beautiful, quiet, shy, book-learned, proud in his own way, elegant, graceful, generous…Marius. Even his name is beautiful. And it seems, now that Marius is here, that my father's importance fades, and that it is possible for me to disdain him.
Azelma's hand is still bleeding. I stepped into the room, and Maman lifted Azelma off of the bed and gave a rag to me.
"Here," she said, "take care of her, she is cut. I am going to put these coverlids on the beds. Wait! first put on these things."
The father of the beautiful young lady left us a package. Inside it were the two new coverlids and the woollen stockings and underclothes. I take the black pair of stockings quickly, snatch them away from Azelma, who does not notice; she is so preoccupied with her hand. Ladies wear black stockings in the winter, if they are not at parties.
"Here," I say, before she starts to suck on her cuts again, "let me tie up your hand."
The rag is unwieldy; I have to rip it lengthwise twice before it is thin enough to serve as a bandage. I wrap the bandage about her hand, and I slip into a dreamland. I remember him, the way my eyelids shook when he spoke gently to me, the way he nervously pushes strands of his beautiful dark, curly hair behind his ear, the way he stands so correctly in his beautiful dark suit.
My father interrupts me just as I finish tying the last knot around Azelma's hand. "You go out!" he storms. "It is queer that it did not strike your eye."
I do not know what he is talking of, and I do not care. That indifference that I did not think I was capable of is slowly starting to seep deeper into my mind; it is a joyful thought.
He catches my arm roughly as I pass the door, and hisses to me. "You will be here at five o'clock precisely. Both of you. I shall need you."
I leave, closing the door. I would love to slam it closed, but it opens the wrong way, and then I do not want to enrage the man. We step out of the Gorbeau tenement, and Azelma scampers off. She has likely seen someone she knows at the end of the street. Yes—there, Montparnasse, the dandy, the rogue. I do not want to see him, to speak to him—not now. Before he can look for me, I slip away, into one of the many Parisian alleys encrusted with the homeless, past the church of Saint Médard, down the Rue Moffetard, around in an abrupt turn, and towards the Seine. The clock in the church tower strikes one as I walk; I have four hours for myself. It is snowing now, and my feet are cold. I have no shoes now; only the stockings are on my feet.
I find the Pont Neuf and cower down underneath it. The bridge is a poor protector against the cold, but a bridge does not snow, and my feet do not freeze here. The woollen stockings are a wonderful blessing; my legs, my thin legs, do not knock against each other with cold now.
If only my father can get money from the father of that girl. I know him too well to think that he would keep all of the money for himself; he is not such a man. He wants to be rich, but one cannot be rich and leave his family in rags. When we lived in Montfermeil, he clothed us well.
What would be the first thing that I would desire, then, if we had money?
I could go to a dressmaker. I could demand to be one of the "best dressed" in Paris, and then I would return to find a beautiful wardrobe waiting for me. A dark green silk gown, with Binche lace on the shoulders, a brown lawn dress with an embroidered bodice…petticoats and underclothing with Valenciennes lace stitched onto them…gauze gloves, lace gloves, silk gloves, elaborately buttoned gloves, embroidered and tasselled gloves. A dazzlingly white gown with silk flowers about the neckline, an apple-green crape hat trimmed with gold and a pale blue silk hat. Stockings—white, cream, grape, black—silk and cotton and lace…beautiful lace garters and elegant, new, buttoned shoes, of dark red silk, of dark green, black, pale blue, gold-embroidered, silver-buttoned.
My hair…my hair would be clean, clean and in curls and braids, with ribbons in it. I would bathe twice a day, and…and one day, I would pass by the old Gorbeau place just at the hour that Marius leaves for supper. He would look up and see me; I would remind him faintly of someone he knew, but he would be dazzled by me. He would see me and his heart would leap, and I would turn around to see him and our eyes would interlock. We…we would stare at each other and slowly move together, and every other person on the street would melt away. Neither of us would see anyone else, and we would be able to look nowhere else but at each other's eyes.
I would be pulled away by my father, or by someone else—or something would happen that would cause us to separate. A fight could break out in the street, and I would be snatched into a fiacre by my mother or a friend of ours. He would forget all about eating or other engagements and run after the fiacre, not thinking of anything else but to see me again.
That evening, thinking of nothing but him, I would escape from the theatre into the small courtyard, where there is a beautiful, illuminated fountain. I would sink down onto the rim of the fountain and finger white gloves embroidered and buttoned in gold absently, remembering his face and the look in his eyes, a gaze a thousand times more vividly intense and loving than the stare with which he must have fixed upon Cosette when he saw her first.
I would be magnificent, in a white dress with white roses in my curled hair, and there he would see me through the elegant fencing. It would be a matter of moments for him to step inside softly, and then for me to know, instinctively, that he is there. I would look up and rise to my feet, and our eyes would say everything. As we did on the street, we would find ourselves drawn to each other, and then…then...our lips would meet, my world would turn upside down, and my heart would burst with love for him.
I open my eyes, and find that I am crying again, my sight blurred most unattractively. I fall onto my side, bury my head in my arms, and try to stop the tears from falling, but in vain. I raise my head three hours later and my sleeves are as wet as if I have just plunged them into the ice-cold river.
Slowly, I trudge back to the tenement. Azelma runs into me outside, gnawing on a piece of bread.
"Ho!" she cries, "you have been outside all this while! Your eyes are red and swollen from the cold."
"Where did you get that bread?" I ask her as we go inside.
"From Montparnasse," she brags. "He took me inside a tavern and gave me this and some wine, which burnt and tasted like cat dirt. He wanted to know where you were, 'Ponine."
I still have the energy to think up a lie, I am pleased to find. "I looked for him and could not find him. He was not at his usual place."
"No, he was not! He was out with Brujon and Claquesous after he bought me this. They were looking for Patron-Minette, I think."
"Oh," I say dully, pushing open the door to our appartement. A hot, baked smell fills my nose, and I cry out. "Maman!"
She is kneeling at the fire, stirring over three large potatoes with an iron stick, and both Azelma and I fly over to her. Wrapping the potatoes in the cleanest rags we have, she hands them to us.
"I have cooked them with salt, mind! They are good, but they are hot. Do not burn yourselves."
We do not heed her warning. It has been too long since we have had anything hot and good to eat. I burn my mouth horribly with the potato, but I do not care; decent food is slipping into my stomach again. Ravenously, I tear at it, at the good, burnt skin, and at the yellow, salty inside. I am behaving like a mongrel, but the wolf tearing at my insides will be happy! he is appeased for now.
Feet clump up the stairs after we finish our elegant supper; it is papà. He lifts the latch and the door bangs open heartily.
"Good evening, pèremuche!" we cry in welcome. Do you know, this is the first time in a long while that the sight of him fills me with glee. He will soon have money for us, and with money, one can conquer the world. Or, which is the same thing, I could conquer his heart.
It is strange. I have real hope again for the first time since meeting Marius, real hope that could lead to something. What, I wonder, will happen tomorrow? a week from today? in a year? So many things can happen in just a few hours; what will the next few bring? If it pleases any higher power to fight for love, they will bring us prosperity. I hope—I hope…I love. I love him.
Read? Review!
Translations: none in this chapter…well, there is always pèremuche, but that is not translated in the book, and from what I can gather, it is a name like "Daddy"…well, except lots more 1831-ised, and not so very non-Éponine. However, corrections are quite warmly appreciated.
And okay, so I lied: this chapter does not feature the attack on Valjean at all; there is merely lots of foreboding. However, ma petite thinks too much, so the attack on Monsieur Urbain Favre is saved for the next chapter. Hopefully. Unless I just write too much.
Mes chères …er…reviewers…dang; how do you translate that into French?
La Pamplemousse—Thank you so much. I try, really, very, very hard.
Cecilia Carlton—::grins:: Thank you! I am so glad that she is in-character...
Sweet775—that is always loved and always appreciated…
Elyse3—Oh, dear, don't get me started on Marius…out of every single book I have read, person I have met, or movie I have seen, Victor Hugo's Marius is my idol, my dream, and my vision. But randomly highlighted words? I believe that is just your computer…
Mlle. Verity le Virago—Yess!! Cats to the ninth power and beyond! (They have never forgotten their days of idols in ancient Egypt, you know) I do hope I can help you stop hating Éponine…after all, she really is just a perfect, beautiful gamine who just needs a comb and a bath. (I am KIDDING!) And yes, Marius is hopeless…sigh…wait, I'm not a right idiot? ::stares oddly at self:: I'm currently sitting on the edge of my seat, hands clamped to the sides of the chair, happily ogling reviews, and looking quite a bit like Dobby, what with the green eyes and ear-waggling and all, and you say I'm not a right idiot? ::shrugs:: Cool. ;)
Moon—oh, oh yes, have I read the book. I have devoured the book. And Éponine is fascinating for exactly the characters that you describe, not only because she's been forsaken in love. Really. People have more to their characters than that! Tsk. I am very glad, though, that you were pleasantly surprised. Thank you!
Tathar—Thank you very, very much. I try as best I can to keep the characters the same as they were in the original Hugo, which does include a rough, ugly Éponine, though I can't help but think that she is appealing because no one has a reason to love her, and yet she has fallen into a strange, self-sacrificial kind of love with someone for whom she would do anything. And yay! Another Marius lover! I'm so glad that you think he is so 'correct' in this fic…that is a very good word to describe him…and I'm glad that I'm somewhat in keeping with Hugo during this whole thing. Sigh. Of happiness.