Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I am sure I shall like it,” he replied, wondering at his own depression of spirits.

  The maid brought him coffee and rolls. He returned the vacant glance of the big-headed young man and acknowledged diffidently the salutes of the snuffy old gentlemen. He did not try to finish his coffee, and sat crumbling a roll, unconscious of the sympathetic glances of Madame Marotte, who had tact enough not to bother him.

  Presently a maid entered with a tray on which were balanced two bowls of chocolate, and the snuffy old gentlemen leered at her ankles. The maid deposited the chocolate at a table near the window and smiled at Hastings. Then a thin young lady, followed by her counterpart in all except years, marched into the room and took the table near the window. They were evidently American, but Hastings, if he expected any sign of recognition, was disappointed. To be ignored by compatriots intensified his depression. He fumbled with his knife and looked at his plate.

  The thin young lady was talkative enough. She was quite aware of Hastings’ presence, ready to be flattered if he looked at her, but on the other hand she felt her superiority, for she had been three weeks in Paris and he, it was easy to see, had not yet unpacked his steamer-trunk.

  Her conversation was complacent. She argued with her mother upon the relative merits of the Louvre and the Bon Marché, but her mother’s part of the discussion was mostly confined to the observation, “Why, Susie!”

  The snuffy old gentlemen had left the room in a body, outwardly polite and inwardly raging. They could not endure the Americans, who filled the room with their chatter.

  The big-headed young man looked after them with a knowing cough, murmuring, “Gay old birds!”

  “They look like bad old men, Mr. Bladen,” said the girl.

  To this Mr. Bladen smiled and said, “They’ve had their day,” in a tone which implied that he was now having his.

  “And that’s why they all have baggy eyes,” cried the girl. “I think it’s a shame for young gentlemen—”

  “Why, Susie!” said the mother, and the conversation lagged.

  After a while Mr. Bladen threw down the Petit Journal, which he daily studied at the expense of the house, and turning to Hastings, started to make himself agreeable. He began by saying, “I see you are American.”

  To this brilliant and original opening, Hastings, deadly homesick, replied gratefully, and the conversation was judiciously nourished by observations from Miss Susie Byng distinctly addressed to Mr. Bladen. In the course of events Miss Susie, forgetting to address herself exclusively to Mr. Bladen, and Hastings replying to her general question, the entente cordiale was established, and Susie and her mother extended a protectorate over what was clearly neutral territory.

  “Mr. Hastings, you must not desert the pension every evening as Mr. Bladen does. Paris is an awful place for young gentlemen, and Mr. Bladen is a horrid cynic.”

  Mr. Bladen looked gratified.

  Hastings answered, “I shall be at the studio all day, and I imagine I shall be glad enough to come back at night.”

  Mr. Bladen, who, at a salary of fifteen dollars a week, acted as agent for the Pewly Manufacturing Company of Troy, N.Y., smiled a sceptical smile and withdrew to keep an appointment with a customer on the Boulevard Magenta.

  Hastings walked into the garden with Mrs. Byng and Susie, and, at their invitation, sat down in the shade before the iron gate.

  The chestnut trees still bore their fragrant spikes of pink and white, and the bees hummed among the roses, trellised on the white-walled house.

  A faint freshness was in the air. The watering carts moved up and down the street, and a clear stream bubbled over the spotless gutters of the rue de la Grande Chaumière. The sparrows were merry along the curb-stones, taking bath after bath in the water and ruffling their feathers with delight. In a walled garden across the street a pair of blackbirds whistled among the almond trees.

  Hastings swallowed the lump in his throat, for the song of the birds and the ripple of water in a Paris gutter brought back to him the sunny meadows of Millbrook.

  “That’s a blackbird,” observed Miss Byng; “see him there on the bush with pink blossoms. He’s all black except his bill, and that looks as if it had been dipped in an omelet, as some Frenchman says—”

  “Why, Susie!” said Mrs. Byng.

  “That garden belongs to a studio inhabited by two Americans,” continued the girl serenely, “and I often see them pass. They seem to need a great many models, mostly young and feminine—”

  “Why, Susie!”

  “Perhaps they prefer painting that kind, but I don’t see why they should invite five, with three more young gentlemen, and all get into two cabs and drive away singing. This street,” she continued, “is dull. There is nothing to see except the garden and a glimpse of the Boulevard Montparnasse through the rue de la Grande Chaumière. No one ever passes except a policeman. There is a convent on the corner.”

  “I thought it was a Jesuit College,” began Hastings, but was at once overwhelmed with a Baedecker description of the place, ending with, “On one side stand the palatial hotels of Jean Paul Laurens and Guillaume Bouguereau, and opposite, in the little Passage Stanislas, Carolus Duran paints the masterpieces which charm the world.”

  The blackbird burst into a ripple of golden throaty notes, and from some distant green spot in the city an unknown wild-bird answered with a frenzy of liquid trills until the sparrows paused in their ablutions to look up with restless chirps.

  Then a butterfly came and sat on a cluster of heliotrope and waved his crimson-banded wings in the hot sunshine. Hastings knew him for a friend, and before his eyes there came a vision of tall mulleins and scented milkweed alive with painted wings, a vision of a white house and woodbine-covered piazza, — a glimpse of a man reading and a woman leaning over the pansy bed, — and his heart was full. He was startled a moment later by Miss Byng.

  “I believe you are homesick!” Hastings blushed. Miss Byng looked at him with a sympathetic sigh and continued: “Whenever I felt homesick at first I used to go with mamma and walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. I don’t know why it is, but those old-fashioned gardens seemed to bring me nearer home than anything in this artificial city.”

  “But they are full of marble statues,” said Mrs. Byng mildly; “I don’t see the resemblance myself.”

  “Where is the Luxembourg?” inquired Hastings after a silence.

  “Come with me to the gate,” said Miss Byng. He rose and followed her, and she pointed out the rue Vavin at the foot of the street.

  “You pass by the convent to the right,” she smiled; and Hastings went.

  III

  The Luxembourg was a blaze of flowers. He walked slowly through the long avenues of trees, past mossy marbles and old-time columns, and threading the grove by the bronze lion, came upon the tree-crowned terrace above the fountain. Below lay the basin shining in the sunlight. Flowering almonds encircled the terrace, and, in a greater spiral, groves of chestnuts wound in and out and down among the moist thickets by the western palace wing. At one end of the avenue of trees the Observatory rose, its white domes piled up like an eastern mosque; at the other end stood the heavy palace, with every window-pane ablaze in the fierce sun of June.

  Around the fountain, children and white-capped nurses armed with bamboo poles were pushing toy boats, whose sails hung limp in the sunshine. A dark policeman, wearing red epaulettes and a dress sword, watched them for a while and then went away to remonstrate with a young man who had unchained his dog. The dog was pleasantly occupied in rubbing grass and dirt into his back while his legs waved into the air.

  The policeman pointed at the dog. He was speechless with indignation.

  “Well, Captain,” smiled the young fellow.

  “Well, Monsieur Student,” growled the policeman.

  “What do you come and complain to me for?”

  “If you don’t chain him I’ll take him,” shouted the policeman.

  “What’s that to me, mon capit
aine?”

  “Wha — t! Isn’t that bull-dog yours?”

  “If it was, don’t you suppose I’d chain him?”

  The officer glared for a moment in silence, then deciding that as he was a student he was wicked, grabbed at the dog, who promptly dodged. Around and around the flower-beds they raced, and when the officer came too near for comfort, the bull-dog cut across a flower-bed, which perhaps was not playing fair.

  The young man was amused, and the dog also seemed to enjoy the exercise.

  The policeman noticed this and decided to strike at the fountain-head of the evil. He stormed up to the student and said, “As the owner of this public nuisance I arrest you!”

  “But,” objected the other, “I disclaim the dog.”

  That was a poser. It was useless to attempt to catch the dog until three gardeners lent a hand, but then the dog simply ran away and disappeared in the rue de Medici.

  The policeman shambled off to find consolation among the white-capped nurses, and the student, looking at his watch, stood up yawning. Then catching sight of Hastings, he smiled and bowed. Hastings walked over to the marble, laughing.

  “Why, Clifford,” he said, “I didn’t recognize you.”

  “It’s my moustache,” sighed the other. “I sacrificed it to humour a whim of — of — a friend. What do you think of my dog?”

  “Then he is yours?” cried Hastings.

  “Of course. It’s a pleasant change for him, this playing tag with policemen, but he is known now and I’ll have to stop it. He’s gone home. He always does when the gardeners take a hand. It’s a pity; he’s fond of rolling on lawns.” Then they chatted for a moment of Hastings’ prospects, and Clifford politely offered to stand his sponsor at the studio.

  “You see, old tabby, I mean Dr. Byram, told me about you before I met you,” explained Clifford, “and Elliott and I will be glad to do anything we can.” Then looking at his watch again, he muttered, “I have just ten minutes to catch the Versailles train; au revoir,” and started to go, but catching sight of a girl advancing by the fountain, took off his hat with a confused smile.

  “Why are you not at Versailles?” she said, with an almost imperceptible acknowledgment of Hastings’ presence.

  “I — I’m going,” murmured Clifford.

  For a moment they faced each other, and then Clifford, very red, stammered, “With your permission I have the honour of presenting to you my friend, Monsieur Hastings.”

  Hastings bowed low. She smiled very sweetly, but there was something of malice in the quiet inclination of her small Parisienne head.

  “I could have wished,” she said, “that Monsieur Clifford might spare me more time when he brings with him so charming an American.”

  “Must — must I go, Valentine?” began Clifford.

  “Certainly,” she replied.

  Clifford took his leave with very bad grace, wincing, when she added, “And give my dearest love to Cécile!” As he disappeared in the rue d’Assas, the girl turned as if to go, but then suddenly remembering Hastings, looked at him and shook her head.

  “Monsieur Clifford is so perfectly hare-brained,” she smiled, “it is embarrassing sometimes. You have heard, of course, all about his success at the Salon?”

  He looked puzzled and she noticed it.

  “You have been to the Salon, of course?”

  “Why, no,” he answered, “I only arrived in Paris three days ago.”

  She seemed to pay little heed to his explanation, but continued: “Nobody imagined he had the energy to do anything good, but on varnishing day the Salon was astonished by the entrance of Monsieur Clifford, who strolled about as bland as you please with an orchid in his buttonhole, and a beautiful picture on the line.”

  She smiled to herself at the reminiscence, and looked at the fountain.

  “Monsieur Bouguereau told me that Monsieur Julian was so astonished that he only shook hands with Monsieur Clifford in a dazed manner, and actually forgot to pat him on the back! Fancy,” she continued with much merriment, “fancy papa Julian forgetting to pat one on the back.”

  Hastings, wondering at her acquaintance with the great Bouguereau, looked at her with respect. “May I ask,” he said diffidently, “whether you are a pupil of Bouguereau?”

  “I?” she said in some surprise. Then she looked at him curiously. Was he permitting himself the liberty of joking on such short acquaintance?

  His pleasant serious face questioned hers.

  “Tiens,” she thought, “what a droll man!”

  “You surely study art?” he said.

  She leaned back on the crooked stick of her parasol, and looked at him. “Why do you think so?”

  “Because you speak as if you did.”

  “You are making fun of me,” she said, “and it is not good taste.”

  She stopped, confused, as he coloured to the roots of his hair.

  “How long have you been in Paris?” she said at length.

  “Three days,” he replied gravely.

  “But — but — surely you are not a nouveau! You speak French too well!”

  Then after a pause, “Really are you a nouveau?”

  “I am,” he said.

  She sat down on the marble bench lately occupied by Clifford, and tilting her parasol over her small head looked at him.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  He felt the compliment, and for a moment hesitated to declare himself one of the despised. Then mustering up his courage, he told her how new and green he was, and all with a frankness which made her blue eyes open very wide and her lips part in the sweetest of smiles.

  “You have never seen a studio?”

  “Never.”

  “Nor a model?”

  “No.”

  “How funny,” she said solemnly. Then they both laughed.

  “And you,” he said, “have seen studios?”

  “Hundreds.”

  “And models?”

  “Millions.”

  “And you know Bouguereau?”

  “Yes, and Henner, and Constant and Laurens, and Puvis de Chavannes and Dagnan and Courtois, and — and all the rest of them!”

  “And yet you say you are not an artist.”

  “Pardon,” she said gravely, “did I say I was not?”

  “Won’t you tell me?” he hesitated.

  At first she looked at him, shaking her head and smiling, then of a sudden her eyes fell and she began tracing figures with her parasol in the gravel at her feet. Hastings had taken a place on the seat, and now, with his elbows on his knees, sat watching the spray drifting above the fountain jet. A small boy, dressed as a sailor, stood poking his yacht and crying, “I won’t go home! I won’t go home!” His nurse raised her hands to Heaven.

  “Just like a little American boy,” thought Hastings, and a pang of homesickness shot through him.

  Presently the nurse captured the boat, and the small boy stood at bay.

  “Monsieur René, when you decide to come here you may have your boat.”

  The boy backed away scowling.

  “Give me my boat, I say,” he cried, “and don’t call me René, for my name’s Randall and you know it!”

  “Hello!” said Hastings,— “Randall? — that’s English.”

  “I am American,” announced the boy in perfectly good English, turning to look at Hastings, “and she’s such a fool she calls me René because mamma calls me Ranny—”

  Here he dodged the exasperated nurse and took up his station behind Hastings, who laughed, and catching him around the waist lifted him into his lap.

  “One of my countrymen,” he said to the girl beside him. He smiled while he spoke, but there was a queer feeling in his throat.

  “Don’t you see the stars and stripes on my yacht?” demanded Randall. Sure enough, the American colours hung limply under the nurse’s arm.

  “Oh,” cried the girl, “he is charming,” and impulsively stooped to kiss him, but the infant Randall wriggled out of
Hastings’ arms, and his nurse pounced upon him with an angry glance at the girl.

  She reddened and then bit her lips as the nurse, with eyes still fixed on her, dragged the child away and ostentatiously wiped his lips with her handkerchief.

  Then she stole a look at Hastings and bit her lip again.

  “What an ill-tempered woman!” he said. “In America, most nurses are flattered when people kiss their children.”

  For an instant she tipped the parasol to hide her face, then closed it with a snap and looked at him defiantly.

  “Do you think it strange that she objected?”

  “Why not?” he said in surprise.

  Again she looked at him with quick searching eyes.

  His eyes were clear and bright, and he smiled back, repeating, “Why not?”

  “You are droll,” she murmured, bending her head.

  “Why?”

  But she made no answer, and sat silent, tracing curves and circles in the dust with her parasol. After a while he said— “I am glad to see that young people have so much liberty here. I understood that the French were not at all like us. You know in America — or at least where I live in Milbrook, girls have every liberty, — go out alone and receive their friends alone, and I was afraid I should miss it here. But I see how it is now, and I am glad I was mistaken.”

  She raised her eyes to his and kept them there.

  He continued pleasantly— “Since I have sat here I have seen a lot of pretty girls walking alone on the terrace there, — and then you are alone too. Tell me, for I do not know French customs, — do you have the liberty of going to the theatre without a chaperone?”

  For a long time she studied his face, and then with a trembling smile said, “Why do you ask me?”

  “Because you must know, of course,” he said gaily.

  “Yes,” she replied indifferently, “I know.”

  He waited for an answer, but getting none, decided that perhaps she had misunderstood him.

  “I hope you don’t think I mean to presume on our short acquaintance,” he began,— “in fact it is very odd but I don’t know your name. When Mr. Clifford presented me he only mentioned mine. Is that the custom in France?”