WHEREIN A MODEST MAN IS BULLIED AND A LITERARY MAN PRACTICES STYLE
"What was your first impression of Paris, Mr. Van Twiller?" inquired the
young man from East Boston, as I was lighting my cigar in the corridor
of the Hôtel des Michetons after breakfast.
"The first thing I noticed," said I, "was the entire United States
walking down the Boulevard des Italiens."
"And your second impression, sir?" he asked somewhat uncertainly.
"The entire United States walking back again." He lighted a cigarette
and tried to appear cheerful. He knew I possessed two daughters. A man
in possession of such knowledge will endure much.
Presently the stout young man from Chicago came up to request a light
for his cigar. "See Paris and die, eh?" he observed with odious
affability.
"I doubt that the city can be as unhealthy as that," I said coldly.
Defeated, he joined forces with the young man from East Boston, and they
retired to the terrace to sit and hate me.
My daughter Alida, my daughter Dulcima, and I spent our first day in
Paris "_ong voitoor_" as the denizen of East Boston informed me later.
"What is your first impression, Alida?" I asked, as our taxi rolled
smoothly down the Avenue de l'Opera.
"Paris? An enormous blossom carved out of stone!--a huge architectural
Renaissance rose with white stone petals!"
I looked at my pretty daughter with pride.
"That is what Mr. Van Dieman says," she added conscientiously.
My enthusiasm cooled at once.
"Van Dieman exaggerates," I said. "Dulcima, what do you find to
characterize Paris?"
"The gowns!" she cried. "Oh, papa! did you see that girl driving past
just now?"
I opened my guidebook in silence. I _had_ seen her.
The sunshine flooded everything; the scent of flowers filled the soft
air; the city was a garden, sweet with green leaves, embroidered with
green grass--a garden, too, in architecture, carved out in silvery gray
foliage of stone. The streets are as smooth and clean as a steamer's
deck, with little clear rivulets running in gutters that seem as
inviting as country brooks. It did not resemble Manhattan.
Paris!
Paris is a big city full of red-legged soldiers.
Paris is a forest of pink and white chestnut blossoms under which the
inhabitants sit without their hats.
Paris is a collection of vistas; at the end of every vista is a misty
masterpiece of architecture; on the summit of every _monument_ is a
masterpiece of sculpture.
Paris is a city of several millions of inhabitants, every inhabitant
holding both hands out to you for a tip.
Paris is a park, smothered in foliage, under which asphalted streets
lead to Paradise.
Paris is a sanitarium so skillfully conducted that nobody can tell the
patients from the physicians; and all the inmates are firmly convinced
that the outside world is mad.
I looked back at the gilded mass of the Opera--that great pile of stone
set lightly there as the toe of a ballet-girl's satin slipper----
"What are you thinking, papa?" asked Alida.
"Nothing," I said hastily, amazed at my own frivolity. "Notice," said I,
"the exquisite harmony of the sky-line. Here in Paris the Government
regulates the height of buildings. Nothing inharmonious can be built;
the selfishness and indifference of private ownership which in New York
erects skyscrapers around our loveliest architectural remains, the City
Hall, would not be tolerated here, where artistic _ensemble_ is as
necessary to people as the bread they eat."
"Dear me, where have I read that?" exclaimed Alida innocently.
I said nothing more.
We were now passing through that wing of the Louvre which faces the
Carousal, and we turned sharply to the right under the little arc, and
straight past the Tuileries Gardens, all blooming with tulips and
hyacinths, past the quaint weather-stained statues of an epoch as dead
as its own sculptors, past the long arcades of the Rivoli, under which
human spiders lurk for the tourist of Cook, and out into the Place de la
Concorde--the finest square in the world.
The sun glittered on the brass inlaid base on which towered the
monolyth. The splashing of the great fountains filled the air with a
fresh sweet sound. Round us, in a vast circle, sat the "Cities of
France," with "Strasburg" smothered in crêpe and funeral wreaths, each
still stone figure crowned with battlemented crowns and bearing the
carved symbols of their ancient power on time-indented escutcheons, all
of stone.
The fresh wet pavement blazed in the sunshine; men wheeled handcarts
filled with violets or piled high with yellow jonquils and silvery
hyacinths.
Violet, white, and yellow--these are the colors which Paris wears in
springtime, twined in her chaplet of tender green.
I said this aloud to Dulcima, who replied that they were wearing blue in
Paris this spring, and that she would like to know how soon we were
going to the dressmakers.
Now at last we were rolling up the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de
Triomphe, a bridge of pearl at the end of the finest vista in the world.
Past us galloped gay cavalry officers, out for a morning canter in the
Bois de Boulogne; past us whizzed automobiles of every hue, shape and
species.
Past us, too, trotted shoals of people well diluted by our fellow
countrymen, yet a truly Parisian crowd for all that. Hundreds of
uniforms dotted the throngs; cuirassiers in short blue stable jackets,
sabres hooked under their left elbows, little _piou-piou_ lads, in baggy
red trousers and shakos bound with yellow; hussars jingling along,
wearing jackets of robin's-egg blue faced with white; chasseurs à
Cheval, wearing turquoise blue braided with black; then came the priests
in black, well groomed as jackdaws in April; policemen in sombre
uniforms, wearing sword bayonets; gendarmes off duty--for the Republican
Guard takes the place of the Gendarmerie within the walls of Paris;
smart officers from the Fontainebleau artillery school, in cherry-red
and black; Saint-Cyr soldiers in crude blues and reds, with the blue
shako smothered under plumes; then Sisters, in their dark habits and
white coifs, with sweet, serene faces looking out on the sinful world
they spend their lives in praying for.
"Dulcima," I said, "what particular characteristic strikes you when you
watch these passing throngs of women?"
"Their necks; every Parisienne is a beauty from behind--such exquisite
necks and hair."
"Their ankles," added Alida innocently; "they are the best-shod women in
the world!"
I had noticed something of the sort; in fact, there is no escape for a
man's eyes in Paris. Look where he will, he is bound to bring up against
two neat little shoes trotting along demurely about their own frivolous
business. One cannot help wondering what that business may be or where
those little polished shoes are going so lightly, tap! tap! across the
polished asphalt. And there are thousands on thousands of such shoes,
passing, repassing, twinkling everywhere, exquisite, shapely, gay little
shoes of Paris, pattering through boulevard and avenue, square, and
street until the whole city takes the cadence, keeping time, day and
night, to the little tripping feet of the Parisienne--bless her, heart
and sole!
"Of what are you thinking, papa?" asked Alida.
"Nothing, child, nothing," I muttered.
We left our taxi and mounted to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The
world around us was bathed in a delicate haze; silver-gray and emerald
the view stretched on every side from the great Basilica on Montmârtre
to the silent Fortress of Mont-Valerien; from the vast dome of the
Pantheon, springing up like a silver bubble in the sky, to the dull
golden dome of the Invalides, and the dome of the Val-de-Grâce.
Spite of the Sainte Chapel, with its gilded lace-work, spite of the
bizarre Tour Saint-Jacques, spite of the lean monster raised by Monsieur
Eiffel, straddling the vase Esplanade in the west, the solid twin towers
of Nôtre-Dame dominated the spreading city by their sheer
majesty--dominated Saint-Sulpice, dominated the Trocadero, dominated
even the Pantheon.
"From those towers," said I, "Quasimodo looked down and saw the slim
body of Esmeralda hanging on the gibbet."
"What became of her goat?" asked Alida, who was fond of pets.
"That reminds me," began Dulcima, "that now we are safely in Paris we
might be allowed to ask papa about that----"
"There is a steamer which sails for New York to-morrow," I said calmly.
"Any mention of that pig will ensure us staterooms in half an hour."
Considerably subdued, the girls meekly opened their Baedekers and
patronized the view, while I lighted a cigar and mused.
It was my second cigar that morning. Certainly I was a changed man--but
was it a change for the better? Within me I felt something stirring--I
knew not what.
It was that long-buried germ of gayety, that latent uncultivated and
embryotic germ which lies dormant in all Anglo-Saxons; and usually dies
dormant or is drowned in solitary cocktails at a solemn club.
Certainly I was changing. Van Dieman was right. Doubtless any change
could not be the worse for a man who has not sufficient intelligence to
take care of his own pig.
"There is," said Dulcima, referring to her guidebook, "a café near here
in the Bois de Boulogne, called the Café des Fleurs de Chine. I should
so love to breakfast at a Chinese café."
"With chopsticks!" added Alida, soulfully clasping her gloved hands.
"Your Café Chinois is doubtless a rendezvous for Apaches," I said, "but
we'll try it if you wish."
I am wondering, now, just what sort of a place that café is, set like a
jewel among the green trees of the Bois. I know it is expensive, but not
very expensive; I know, also, that the dainty young persons who sipped
mint on the terrace appeared to disregard certain conventionalities
which I had been led to believe were never disregarded in France.
The safest way was to pretend a grave abstraction when their bright eyes
wandered toward one; and I did this, without exactly knowing why I did.
"I wish," said I to Dulcima, "that Van Dieman were here. He understands
all this surface life one sees in the parks and streets."
"Do you really wish that Mr. Van Dieman were here?" asked Alida, softly
coloring.
I looked at her gravely.
"Because," she said, "I believe he is coming about the middle of May."
"Oh, he is, is he?" I said, without enthusiasm. "Well, we shall
doubtless be in the Rhine by the middle of May."
"My gowns couldn't be finished until June any way," said Dulcima, laying
her gloved fingers on Alida's chair.
So they were allies, then.
"I didn't know you had ordered any gowns," I said superciliously.
"I haven't--yet," she said coolly.
"Neither have I," began Alida; but I refused to hear any more.
"When you are at your modistes you may talk gowns until you faint away,"
said I; "but now let us try to take an intelligent interest in this
famous and ancient capital of European civilization and liberty----"
"Did you notice that girl's gown?" motioned Alida to Dulcima.
I also looked. But it was not the beauty of the gown that I found so
remarkable.
"I wonder," thought I--"but no matter. I wish that idiot Van Dieman were
here."
* * * * *
That evening, after my daughters had retired, I determined to sit up
later than I ought to. The reckless ideas which Paris inspired in me,
alarmed me now and then. But I was game.
So I seated myself in the moonlit court of the hotel and lighted an
unwise cigar and ordered what concerns nobody except the man who
swallowed it, and, crossing my legs, looked amiably around.
Williams sat at the next table.
"Hello, old sport," he said affably.
"Williams," I said, "guess who I was thinking about a moment ago."
"A girl?"
"No, of course not. I was thinking of Jim Landon. What ever became of
him?"
"Jim? Oh, he's all right."
"Successful?"
"Very. You ought to have heard of him over there; but I suppose you
don't keep up with art news."
"No," I admitted, ashamed--"it's rather difficult to keep up with
anything on Long Island. Does Jim Landon live here?"
"In Normandy, with his wife."
"Oh, he got married. Was it that wealthy St. Louis girl who----"
"No; she married into the British Peerage. No, Landon didn't do anything
of that sort. Quite the contrary."
"He--he didn't marry his model, did he?"
"Yes--in a way."
"In a way?"
Williams summoned a waiter who shifted his equipment to my table.
"It's rather an unusual story," he said. "Would you care to hear it?"
"Does it portray, with your well known literary skill, the confusion of
a parent?" I inquired cautiously. "If it does, don't tell it."
"It doesn't."
"Oh. Nobody puts it all over the old man?"
"No, not in this particular instance. Shall I begin?"
"Shoot," I said.
He began with his usual graceful gesture:
* * * * *
Landon was dead broke.
As it had not been convenient for him to breakfast that morning, he was
irritable. The mockery of handsome hangings and antique furniture in the
outer studio increased his irritation as he walked through it into the
rough, inner workshop, which was hung with dusty casts and dreary with
clay and plaster.
Here Ellis found him, an hour later, smoking a cigarette to deceive his
appetite, and sulkily wetting down the clay bust of a sheep-faced old
lady--an order of the post-mortem variety which he was executing from a
gruesome photograph.
"How," inquired Ellis, "is the coy Muse treating you these palmy, balmy
days?"
Landon swore and squirted a spongeful of water over the old lady's side
curls.
"My! my! As bad as that?" commented Ellis, raising his eyebrows. "I
thought you expected to be paid for that tombstone."
"Man, I've been eating, drinking, and sleeping on that tombstone all
winter. Last night I gnawed off the 'Hic Jacet' and washed it down with
the date. There's nothing left."
"You've--ah--breakfasted, dear friend?"
"That's all right----"
"_Have_ you?"
"No. But there's a man from Fourth Avenue coming to buy some of that
superfluous magnificence in the show studio. Besides, I'll be paid for
this old lady in a day or two-- Where are you going?"
"Out," said Ellis, briefly.
Landon, left alone, threw a bit of wet clay at the doorknob, stood
irresolutely, first on one foot, then on the other; then with a hearty
scowl at the sheep-faced old lady washed her complacent face with a
dripping sponge.
* * * * *
"Williams!" I interrupted violently, "how do you know all those
details?"
"My Lord, man!" he retorted; "I write for a living. I've got to know
them."
"Go on, then," I said.
He went on:
* * * * *
A few moments later Ellis came in with rolls, milk and fruit.
"That's very decent of you," said Landon, but the other cut him short,
excitedly.
"Jim, who is the divinity I just met in your hallway? Yours?"
"What divinity?"
"Her hair," said Ellis, a little wildly, "is the color of Tuscan gold;
her eyes, ultra marine; and the skin of her is just pure snow with a
brushful of carmine across the lips--and the Great Sculptor Himself must
have moulded her body----"
Landon shrugged and buttered a roll. "You let her alone," he said.
"Reveal to me instantly her name, titles, and quality!" shouted Ellis,
unsheathing a Japanese sword.
"Her name," said Landon, "is O'Connor; her quality is that of a
shopgirl. She is motherless and alone, and inhabits a kennel across the
hall. Don't make eyes at her. She'll probably believe whatever the first
gentlemanly blackguard tells her."
Ellis said: "Why may I not--in a delicately detached and gayly
impersonal, yet delightfully and evasively irrational manner, calculated
to deceive nobody----"
"That would sound very funny in the Latin Quarter. This is New York." He
rose, frowning. Presently he picked up the sponge. "Better let a lonely
heart alone, unless you're in earnest," he said, and flung the sponge
back into a bucket of water, dried his hands, and looked around.
"Have you sold any pictures yet?"
"Not one. I thought I had a Copper King nailed to the easel, but Fate
separated us on a clinch and he got away and disappeared behind the bars
of his safe deposit. How goes the market with you?"
"Dead. I can live on my furniture for a while."
"I thought you were going in on that competition for the Department of
Peace at Washington."
"I am, if I have enough money left to hire a model."
Ellis rose, twirled his walking-stick meditatively, glanced at his
carefully brushed hat, and placed it gravely on his head.
"Soon," he said cheerfully, "it will be time for straw hats. But where
I'm going to get one I don't know. Poverty used to be considered funny
in the Quarter; but it's no idle jest in this town. Well--I'll let your
best girl alone, Jim, if you feel that way about it."
They laughed and shook hands.
In the corridor Ellis looked hard at the closed door opposite, and his
volatile heart gave a tortured thump; he twirled his stick and sauntered
out into Stuyvesant Square.
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