“No, I’m not,” retorted Clifford.
“You are! You’re going to tell me that you’ve seen the most wonderful girl in the Luxembourg, who must be some foreign countess! Don’t I know! Haven’t I heard it a thousand times? And hasn’t the countess always turned up with you at some cheap restaurant?”
Clifford sat down on a camp-stool and pointed his cane toward the floor. Squinting along it at a spot of sunlight on the velvety Eastern rug, he listened in silence to Elliott’s reproaches.
“Have you finished?” he asked.
Elliott girded up his bath-robe and moved off.
“Because,” continued Clifford, “I have a proposition to make.”
“Make it then,” said Elliott, scowling.
“Well, sit down.”
Elliott squatted Turk fashion on a divan, saying bitterly, “Last week you moaned and protested that you had been wasting your time. Now go on with your proposition, — but I’ll not be a party to any new infatuation, let me tell you—”
Clifford began to walk up and down the studio, gloved hands clasped behind his back, head thoughtfully bent as far as his collar permitted. As he walked he twiddled his cane.
“Well?” inquired Elliott sarcastically.
Clifford came up to him and stood a moment in silence. Then he said: “Elliott, suppose we get married to twins?”
“Married!” bawled Elliott in angry astonishment.
“Irretrievably,” continued Clifford gently, “suppose we go into the thing thoroughly. Suppose we become respectable!”
“I am,” broke out Elliott, but the other held up five expostulating gloved fingers.
“In a way — yes, in a way. But do you know what I think? I think no man is absolutely and hopelessly respectable unless he has a wife! — Elliott, a wife — a little wifey—”
“Rubbish!” replied Elliott, rising from the divan. “And let me inform you I don’t want a wife. I’m well enough as I am — if anybody should ask you. Let go of my bath-robe; I’m going to paint.”
“Think,” urged Clifford,—” think of being really and legally married — think of the joyful anguish — no more suppers, no more Bullier, no more tzing! la! la!—”
He removed his silk hat, skipped playfully, and pretended to kick it.
“But,” he continued, with sudden soberness, “a wife — a little wifey — is recompense for all pleasure—”
“Antidote, you mean—”
“No, I don’t! Joy is born from the nuptial blessing. I desire to wed—”
“Who? What?”
“A lovely, spirituelle, delicate vision — unworldly and — er — passably provided for—”
“By you?”
“Partly by me — partly by an adoring father, — a fine silvery-haired old patrician, borne down by the weighty cares of his millions — do you know any of that kind, Elliott?”
“I know some silvery-haired patricians.”
“Tottering under the weight of millions?”
“Yes.”
“With daughters?”
“Never asked ‘em.”
“What about the new Ambassador? You said his daughter—”
Elliott laughed:
“Oh, he’s tottering under millions, but his hair is red and I think that hers—”
“You annoy me,” said Clifford, and left the studio. He paused in the garden, sniffed at the lilacs, eyes raised in contemplation of the firmament.
“Nevertheless,” he said to himself, “red hair or silver hair — I’m not bigoted on the silver question. And,” he added with sprightly humour, “it’s 16 to 1 I call on his Excellency before the week is out.”
II.
His Excellency the United States Ambassador was a sheep-faced old gentleman who became hopelessly mixed up in some railroads and escaped with impaired health and most of the stock. Wheat hit him hard a year later, and oil nearly ended him, but he became entangled in trolley wires and put them underground to save future annoyance to his legs. This naturally set him on his feet again; and he went to Washington where there is honour among — financiers, and where they practise statesmanship as she is taught. When his wife died and his daughter Amyce began to go to school, his future Excellency bobbed up and down in Congress with the caprice and abruptness of a bottled imp. The see-saw continued year after year; sometimes he had a bill passed, sometimes he blocked a bill; now and then he got other people’s money, now and then other people got his money; but it evened up in the end like dominoes — if you play long enough.
Then came the new administration, the stampede for office. Before his future Excellency made up his own mind, fate shoved him into the front rank, and he asked for the French mission and the odds were against him. The President weighed him — the scales of the mint are exquisitely adjusted — and, separating the dross from the pure metal, the mind from the material, the President found him available for the diplomatic mission and told him he might have it. So he took it and went.
His Excellency’s income permitted him to keep up his establishment in the rue de Sfax. Two neat attachés, military and naval, played croquet with him; his first secretary read Ollendorf to him, his daughter played hostess on national holidays, and Massenet every morning from ten to twelve. From three to four she swung in a hammock in the garden, and read Henry James.
It was at that hour and under those circumstances that Clifford first met Amyce. He was permitting his Excellency to beat him at croquet on the lawn; he loathed the game with a loathing untranslatable. He sat on the butt-end of his mallet, watching his Excellency pattering about from stake to stake, adjusting the balls with a chuckle, stooping to peer through wickets, calculating angles and split-shots.
His Excellency’s heavy, sheep-like face with its silvery tuft of side-whiskers was ruddy and minutely shaved. Always scrupulously dressed, he had the air of having been neatly attired by a doll’s costumer, then varnished. There was something about the old gentleman that recalled the irresponsible inertia of a manikin, — something, when he moved that resembled the automatic trot of a marionnette. He left an impression of not being responsible for either his clothes or his movements, but mutely referred you to his maker for guarantees that both were O. K. His hair was the glossy white that red hair frequently changes to; his eyes were pale hazel, lambent and vitreous as the eyes of a middle-aged sheep. His upper lip, also, seemed as though it were intended for cropping short grass.
He had taken to Clifford at once; he introduced him to the naval attaché and to the military attaché, to the first, second, and third secretaries of the Embassy. He did this partly because Clifford came armed with three good letters of introduction, partly because the United Service began to fight shy of the croquet-ground, and a substitute was necessary.
He did not, however, present him to his daughter; in fact Clifford had never even caught a glimpse of her, although on two occasions he had been bidden to dine at the Embassy. Stanley of the cavalry, the military attaché, had been pumped by Clifford without result. All he learned was that the young lady sometimes dined by herself.
However, that afternoon in early May, as Clifford sat glum and impatient on his mallet, and the Ambassador trotted about mauling the lawn, a young lady suddenly appeared under the trees by the hammock, glanced nonchalantly at his Excellency, languidly surveyed Clifford, and then, placing a hammock-pillow where it would do the most good, sat down in the hammock. It was gracefully done; she appeared to dissolve among a cloud of delicate draperies; her head indented the feather cushion; one small patent-leather toe glistened in the sunlight.
“She is red-haired,” was Clifford’s first thought; the next was: “She is a beauty, — oh, my conscience!”
She was. Her eyes were those great tender grey eyes that must have been forgotten when Saint Anthony was tortured; her skin was snow and roses. But her hair, her splendid, glistening hair, heavy and red gold! — dazzling as sunlight on floss-silk!
“It’s your shot,” said his Excellenc
y for the third time.
The Ambassador won the game; he proposed another and Clifford assented with a sickly smile. Inwardly he swore that he would be presented, willy-nilly, even though he had to drag his Excellency to the hammock.
“Confound him,” he thought; “have rumours of my reputation in the Quarter penetrated my country’s Embassy?”
They had not; yet, it was exactly because Clifford was an artist and inhabited the Latin Quarter that the Ambassador avoided taking him to the bosom of his family. Vague and dreadful stories had been afloat in the Embassy concerning the Quarter. His Excellency had read Trilby too. This may have weighed with him; he had that distrust of art and artists prevalent among Anglo-Saxons. He also had the Anglo-Saxon desire to explore the Quarter for him self, one day, — if all was true as rumour had it. Therefore Clifford was doubly welcome, for his croquet, and for what the future promised when his Excellency needed a companion to the veiled mysteries of the Rive Gauche. So, on the whole, Clifford was a good man to amuse him, but not at all the kind of man to amuse Amyce.
But Fate, busy, as usual, with other people’s business, began to meddle with the hammock cords where Amyce swung serenely reading Henry James.
Amyce rose just in time; there came a rapid unravelling of cords, and the collapsed hammock fell with a flop.
Flushed at the nearness of undignified disaster, Amyce shook out her fluffy skirts, Henry James tightly clasped in one hand, and looked appealingly at his Excellency.
The Ambassador started to rehang the hammock; Clifford said: “Permit me—”
“Not at all,” returned the Ambassador, — but that was where he collided with Fate.
Amyce smiled and looked relieved; Clifford rehung the hammock; Amyce thanked him. Then there was a pause during which both looked expectantly at his Excellency.
The Ambassador sullenly did his duty and took Clifford back to the lawn and beat him five games of croquet. But even this triumph was wet-blanketed, for Amyce, holding Henry James to her chin, came out to the lawn to “watch papa” and encourage “papa,” and condole with Clifford for his bad fortune. Only he knew how good that fortune had been — and, perhaps, she suspected it.
Amyce suggested tea on the lawn; his Excellency began to object, but Fate was there and took another fall out of his Excellency, for Amyce had already ordered it, and a servant appeared with tables and trays on the porch.
The Ambassador cropped thin slices of bread-and-butter; Amyce poured tea; Clifford, in a daze of love, saw everything through pink haze. From this dream he was abruptly roused by the advent of Captain Stanley of the cavalry. He saw Amyce feed the brute with tea; he heard her laugh softly when the Captain told some imbecile story or imitated Count Fantozzi. He measured the Captain, he accorded him six feet two, a pair of superb legs, and a cavalry moustache.
“Granted him cards and spades,” thought Clifford, “I’ll beat him yet. I know I can.”
He was an honest youth with no more vanity than you or I.
III.
In the Quarter, Clifford’s attitude became unbearable. Rumours were afloat that he had outgrown the Quarter and its simple lurid pleasures; that he had put away childish things; that he consorted exclusively with the ostentatious great. When garden parties were given at the English Embassy, Clifford’s name figured among the guests, — and the Quarter read it in the Figaro and chafed.
Elliott, incredulous at first, observed the absence of Clifford from all Quarter rites with astonishment and grief. The studio grew lonelier and lonelier. Elliott drank cocktails and brooded.
“See here,” he blurted out, one day, “how long are you going to keep this up?”
“What?” replied Clifford, placing violets in his buttonhole.
“This confounded pose of yours — this tolerating the Quarter — this Embassy nonsense!”
“I prefer it to Bullier,” said Clifford—” or,” he added maliciously, “to the ‘Bal à l’Hôtel-de-Ville.’”
Then he put on his gloves, humming:
“Des chapeaux melon et des chapeaux rond!”
Dame! c’est pas d’ia petite bière! — eu!
Tous ces gueux là
Ils ont pigé ça
‘A la Belle Jardinière! — eu!”
Elliott arose in fury.
“Very well,” he said, “go and eat thin bread-and-butter and talk to fat princesses! — go and learn baccarat from that yellow mummy Fantozzi! — go and play imbecile croquet games with his Excellency and marry his daughter and live in the Parc Monçéaux. But you’ll regret it! oh yes, you’ll be sorry. And you’ll think of the Luxembourg and of Jacquette and the old studio, and you’ll hear a nursery full of babies squawling and you’ll see Fantozzi leering at your wife and—”
Clifford looked around with gently raised eyebrows.
“I won’t be back to dinner,” he said amiably.
“Where are you going — dressed like that!” burst out Elliott with new violence.
“Going to shoot pigeons in the Bois.”
They stood for a while in silence. Presently Elliott arose, went over to his manikin, and began to dress it; the manikin at present was doing duty as a French fireman for Elliott’s great picture, “Saved!”
He mechanically placed the brass pot-helmet on the manikin’s papier-maché head, twisted the neck viciously, straightened out a sawdust stuffed arm, placed a rope in the hand, and closed the jointed fingers. Then he hauled out his easel, opened his colour box, and clattered the brushes.
Clifford watched him.
Elliott set his palette rainbow fashion, touched the canvas with the tip of his third finger, rolled a badger brush in rose-dorée, and began to glaze.
“Don’t glaze yet,” said Clifford.
“Why?” snapped Elliott without turning.
“Because you make the flames too pink.”
“What do you know about flames or pictures or glazing?” said Elliott bitterly. “Go and shoot pigeons and get married.”
Clifford went out haughtily; yet there was an unaccustomed pang in his breast. He suddenly realised how utterly out of it he was; he began to comprehend that he was afloat on the Rubicon in a very leaky boat. There was nothing to warrant his hopes of Amyce except a superb self-confidence. He saw he was alienating the Quarter; — he noticed it now, as he walked, when Selby passed with a constrained smile, when Lambert bowed to him with unaccustomed rigidity, when, as he crossed the Luxembourg, Jacquette, passing with Marianne Dupoix, averted her pretty eyes.
He knew that an announcement of his engagement would be followed by excommunication from the Quarter. He had intended, in the event of betrothal, to confine his Quarter visits to Elliott and Selby and Rowden, but the prospect of involuntary exclusion had small attraction for him. He thought of Jacquette; the odour of violets from a street flower-stand recalled her.
He was in a bad humour when he reached the Tir aux Pigeons. Before he entered he saw Captain Stanley laughing on the lawn with Amyce. That, and the apparition of Fantozzi, completed his irritation and his score at the traps was ridiculous.
“You play croquet better,” observed his Excellency, at his elbow.
That was the last straw, and Clifford forced a smile and went across the lawn.
“What was your score?” asked Amyce, looking up at him from the shade of her white parasol.
He was compelled to confess it.
Fantozzi, interrupted in the recountal of recent personal experience with an electric tram-car, raised his eyebrows superciliously.
“Pooh,” said Captain Stanley, “everybody gets out of form at times.”
Clifford looked gratefully at his generous rival; Amyce also raised her eyes to the well-knit military figure. Generosity is sometimes its own reward — sometimes it even receives perquisites.
Fantozzi continued his dramatic recital of the discourteous tram-car.
“I would come in a tram electrique — Mademoiselle — behold me on the corner street! — the tram approach! —
I nod my head! — he do not hear me—”
“Couldn’t hear you nod your head?” inquired Stanley sympathetically.
“Wonder his brains didn’t rattle,” muttered Clifford to himself.
“I nod! I nod!” repeated Fantozzi with mercurial passion; “I permit myself to make observation to stop! Cease! arrest ze tram! He regard me insolent! the tram vanishes itself! I am left on the corner street! The miserable laugh!”
“Are you sure you called to the motor-man to stop?” asked Stanley gravely.
“Parbleu! I did say stop! I said it! I did hear myself say it!”
“Mr. Clifford,” said Amyce, “who is shooting?” She raised her lorgnettes: “Oh, Count Routier! Do you know I am not pleased to see little birds shot. Captain Stanley, it is your turn next. Have you no pity for those poor pigeons?”
“Monsieur Clifford had,” said Count Fantozzi. Amyce frowned a little; Fantozzi, prepared to laugh at his own wit, winced at the silence.
“Well,” said Stanley, “I must go and perform. Shall I miss every bird — is it your pleasure?” he added, looking at Amyce.
Amyce smiled, her face was an enigma.
“Do as you please, I wish you good fortune in any event,” she said.
Fantozzi pretended to shudder for the pigeon victims; Stanley walked thoughtfully across the lawn; Clifford, on fire with mixed emotions of jealousy and love, pretended to be absorbed in the shooting. He glanced indifferently at the gaily-dressed groups on the green, recognised some people and bowed, returned the salutes of other people who recognised him, and finally sat down on a camp-stool near Amyce.
Others were joining the group; a lieutenant of hussars, in sky-blue and silver, a brilliant-eyed diplomatic group from Brazil, one or two tall Englishmen, scrubbed pink, and finally his Excellency the United States Ambassador.
Clifford loathed them all; yet, Amyce was very kind to him. While Captain Stanley stood shooting, she scarcely glanced at the traps, and when that sober-faced young cavalryman sauntered back and confessed he had killed every bird, she scarcely raised her eyebrows. Was it displeasure?
“It is but a sport brutal,” whispered Fantozzi close behind her.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1103