Politicians gossiped. Where was the new member? His friends could not
tell, further than that he had gone abroad. Lord Faramond did not know,
but fetched out his lower lip knowingly.
“The fellow has instinct for the game,” he said. Sketches, portraits
were in the daily and weekly journals, and one hardy journalist even
gave an interview--which had never occurred. But Gaston remained a
picturesque nine-days’ figure, and then Parliament rose for the year.
Meanwhile he was in Paris, and every morning early he could be seen with
Jacques riding up the Champs Elysee and out to the Bois de Boulogne.
Every afternoon at three he sat for “Monmouth” or the “King of Ys” with
his horse in his uncle’s garden.
Ian Belward might have lived in a fashionable part; he preferred the
Latin Quarter, with incursions into the other at fancy. Gaston lived for
three days in the Boulevard Haussman, and then took apartments, neither
expensive nor fashionable, in a quiet street. He was surrounded
by students and artists, a few great men and a host of small men:
Collarossi’s school here and Delacluse’s there: models flitting in and
out of the studios in his court-yard, who stared at him as he rode, and
sought to gossip with Jacques--accomplished without great difficulty.
Jacques was transformed. A cheerful hue grew on his face. He had been an
exile, he was now at home. His French tongue ran, now with words in the
patois of Normandy, now of Brittany; and all with the accent of French
Canada, an accent undisturbed by the changes and growths of France. He
gossiped, but no word escaped him which threw any light on his master’s
history.
Soon, in the Latin Quarter, they were as notable as they had been at
Ridley Court or in London. On the Champs Elysee side people stared
at the two: chiefly because of Gaston’s splendid mount and Jacques’s
strange broncho. But they felt that they were at home. Gaston’s French
was not perfect, but it was enough for his needs. He got a taste of that
freedom which he had handed over to the dungeons of convention two years
before. He breathed. Everything interested him so much that the life he
had led in England seemed very distant.
He wrote to Delia, of course. His letters were brief, most interesting,
not tenderly intimate, and not daily. From the first they puzzled her
a little, and continued to do so; but because her mother said, “What an
impossible man!” she said, “Perfectly possible! Of course he is not like
other men; he is a genius.”
And the days went on.
Gaston little loved the purlieus of the Place de l’Opera. One evening
at a club in the Boulevard Malesherbes bored him. It was merely
Anglo-American enjoyment, dashed with French drama. The Bois was more to
his taste, for he could stretch his horse’s legs; but every day he could
be found before some simple cafe in Montparnasse, sipping vermouth, and
watching the gay, light life about him. He sat up with delight to see an
artist and his “Madame” returning from a journey in the country, seated
upon sheaves of corn, quite unregarded by the world; doing as they
listed with unabashed simplicity. He dined often at the little Hotel St.
Malo near the Gare Montparnasse, where the excellent landlord played
the host, father, critic, patron, comrade--often benefactor--to his
bons enfants. He drank vin ordinaire, smoked caporal cigarettes,
made friends, and was in all as a savage--or a much-travelled English
gentleman.
His uncle Ian had introduced him here as at other places of the kind,
and, whatever his ulterior object was, had an artist’s pleasure at
seeing a layman enjoy the doings of Paris art life. Himself lived more
luxuriously. In an avenue not far from the Luxembourg he had a small
hotel with a fine old-fashioned garden behind it, and here distinguished
artists, musicians, actors, and actresses came at times.
The evening of Gaston’s arrival he took him to a cafe and dined him, and
afterwards to the Boullier--there, merely that he might see; but this
place had nothing more than a passing interest for him. His mind had
the poetry of a free, simple--even wild-life, but he had no instinct for
vice in the name of amusement. But the later hours spent in the garden
under the stars, the cheerful hum of the boulevards coming to them
distantly, stung his veins like good wine. They sat and talked, with no
word of England in it at all, Jacques near, listening.
Ian Belward was at his best: genial, entertaining, with the art of the
man of no principles, no convictions, and a keen sense of life’s sublime
incongruities. Even Jacques, whose sense of humour had grown by long
association with Gaston, enjoyed the piquant conversation. The next
evening the same. About ten o’clock a few men dropped in: a sculptor,
artists, and Meyerbeer, an American newspaper correspondent--who,
however, was not known as such to Gaston.
This evening Ian determined to make Gaston talk. To deepen a man’s love
for a thing, get him to talk of it to the eager listener--he passes from
the narrator to the advocate unconsciously. Gaston was not to talk of
England, but of the North, of Canada, of Mexico, the Lotos Isles. He did
so picturesquely, yet simply too, in imperfect but sufficient French.
But as he told of one striking incident in the Rockies, he heard Jacques
make a quick expression of dissent. He smiled. He had made some mistake
in detail. Now, Jacques had been in his young days in Quebec the
village story-teller; one who, by inheritance or competency, becomes
semi-officially a raconteur for the parish; filling in winter evenings,
nourishing summer afternoons, with tales, weird, childlike, daring.
Now Gaston turned and said to Jacques:
“Well, Brillon, I’ve forgotten, as you see; tell them how it was.”
Two hours later when Jacques retired on some errand, amid ripe applause,
Ian said:
“You’ve got an artist there, Cadet: that description of the fight with
the loop garoo was as good as a thing from Victor Hugo. Hugo must have
heard just such yarns, and spun them on the pattern. Upon my soul, it’s
excellent stuff. You’ve lived, you two.”
Another night Ian Belward gave a dinner, at which were present an
actress, a singer of some repute, the American journalist, and others.
Something that was said sent Gaston’s mind to the House of Commons.
Presently he saw himself in a ridiculous picture: a buffalo dragging the
Treasury Bench about the Chamber; as one conjures things in an absurd
dream. He laughed outright, at a moment when Mademoiselle Cerise was
telling of a remarkable effect she produced one night in “Fedora,”
unpremeditated, inspired; and Mademoiselle Cerise, with smiling lips and
eyes like daggers, called him a bear. This brought him to him self, and
he swam with the enjoyment. He did enjoy it, but not as his uncle wished
and hoped. Gaston did not respond eagerly to the charms of Mademoiselle
Cerise and Madame Juliette.
Was Delia, then, so strong in the barbarian’s mind? He could not think
so, but Gaston had not shown yet, either for model, for daughter of joy,
or for the mademoiselles of the stage any disposition to an amour or a
misalliance; and either would be interesting and sufficient! Models went
in and out of Ian’s studio and the studios of others, and Gaston chatted
with them at times; and once he felt the bare arm and bare breast of
a girl as she sat for a nymph, and said in an interested way that her
flesh was as firm and fine as a Tongan’s. He even disputed with his
uncle on the tints of her skin, on seeing him paint it in, showing
a fine eye for colour. But there was nothing more; he was impressed,
observant, interested--that was all. His uncle began to wonder if the
Englishman was, after all, deeper in the grain than the savage. He
contented himself with the belief that the most vigorous natures are the
most difficult to rouse. Mademoiselle Cerise sang, with chic and abandon
very fascinating to his own sensuous nature, a song with a charming air
and sentiment. It was after a night at the opera when they had seen her
in “Lucia,” and the contrast, as she sang in his garden, softly lighted,
showed her at the most attractive angles. She drifted from a sparkling
chanson to the delicate pathos of a song of De Musset’s.
Gaston responded to the artist; but to the woman--no. He had seen a new
life, even in its abandon, polite, fresh. It amused him, but he could
still turn to the remembrance of Delia without blushing, for he had
come to this in the spirit of the idler, not the libertine. Mademoiselle
Cerise said to Ian at last:
“Enfin, is the man stone? As handsome as a leopard, too! But, it is no
matter.”
She made another effort to interest him, however. It galled her that he
did not fall at her feet as others had done. Even Ian had come there
in his day, but she knew him too well. She had said to him at the time:
“You, monsieur? No, thank you. A week, a month, and then the brute in
you would out. You make a woman fond, and then--a mat for your feet, and
your wicked smile, and savage English words to drive her to the vitriol
or the Seine. Et puis, dear monsieur, accept my good friendship; nothing
more. I will sing to you, dance to you, even pray for you--we poor
sinners do that sometimes, and go on sinning; but, again, nothing more.”
Ian admired her all the more for her refusal of him, and they had been
good friends. He had told her of his nephew’s coming, had hinted at his
fortune, at his primitive soul, at the unconventional strain in him,
even at marriage. She could not read his purpose, but she knew there
was something, and answering him with a yes, had waited. Had Gaston have
come to her feet she would probably have got at the truth somehow, and
have worked in his favour--the joy vice takes to side with virtue, at
times--when it is at no personal sacrifice. But Gaston was superior in
a grand way. He was simple, courteous, interested only. This stung her,
and she would bring him to his knees, if she could. This night she had
rung all the changes, and had done no more than get his frank applause.
She became petulant in an airy, exacting way. She asked him about his
horse. This interested him. She wanted to see it. To-morrow? No, no,
now. Perhaps to-morrow she would not care to; there was no joy in
deliberate pleasure. Now--now--now! He laughed. Well then, now, as she
wished!
Jacques was called. She said to him:
“Come here, little comrade.” Jacques came. “Look at me,” she added.
She fixed her eyes on him, and smiled. She was in the soft flare of the
lights.
“Well,” she said after a moment, “what do you think of me?”
Jacques was confused. “Madame is beautiful.”
“The eyes?” she urged.
“I have been to Gaspe, and west to Esquimault, and in England, but I
have never seen such as those,” he said. Race and primitive man spoke
there.
She laughed. “Come closer, little man.”
He did so. She suddenly rose, dropped her hands on his shoulders, and
kissed his cheek.
“Now bring the horse, and I will kiss him too.”
Did she think she could rouse Gaston by kissing his servant? Yet it did
not disgust him. He knew it was a bit of acting, and it was well done.
Besides, Jacques Brillon was not a mere servant, and he, too, had done
well. She sat back and laughed lightly when Jacques was gone. Then she
said: “The honest fellow!” and hummed an air:
“‘The pretty coquette
Well she needs to be wise,
Though she strike to the heart
By a glance of her eyes.
“‘For the daintiest bird
Is the sport of the storm,
And the rose fadeth most
When the bosom is warm.’”
In twenty minutes the gate of the garden opened, and Jacques appeared
with Saracen. The horse’s black skin glistened in the lights, and he
tossed his head and champed his bit. Gaston rose. Mademoiselle Cerise
sprang to her feet and ran forward. Jacques put out his hand to stop
her, and Gaston caught her shoulder. “He’s wicked with strangers,”
Gaston said. “Chat!” she rejoined, stepped quickly to the horse’s
head and, laughing, put out her hand to stroke him. Jacques caught the
beast’s nose, and stopped a lunge of the great white teeth.
“Enough, madame, he will kill you!”
“Yet I am beautiful--is it not so?”
“The poor beast is ver’ blind.”
“A pretty compliment,” she rejoined, yet angry at the beast.
Gaston came, took the animal’s head in his hands, and whispered. Saracen
became tranquil. Gaston beckoned to Mademoiselle Cerise. She came. He
took her hand in his and put it at the horse’s lips. The horse whinnied
angrily at first, but permitted a caress from the actress’s fingers.
“He does not make friends easily,” said Gaston. “Nor does his master.”
Her eyes lifted to his, the lids drooping suggestively. “But when the
pact is made--!”
“Till death us do part?”
“Death or ruin.”
“Death is better.”
“That depends!”
“Ah! I understand,” she said.
“On--the woman?”
“Yes.”
Then he became silent. “Mount the horse,” she urged.
Gaston sprang at one bound upon the horse’s bare back. Saracen reared
and wheeled.
“Splendid!” she said; then, presently: “Take me up with you.”
He looked doubting for a moment, then whispered to the horse.
“Come quickly,” he said.
She came to the side of the horse. He stooped, caught her by the waist,
and lifted her up. Saracen reared, but Gaston had him down in a moment.
Ian Belward suddenly called out:
“For God’s sake, keep that pose for five minutes--only five!” He caught
up some canvas. “Hold candles near them,” he said to the others. They
did so. With great swiftness he sketched in the strange picture. It
looked weird, almost savage: Gaston’s large form, his legs loose at the
horse’s side, the woman in her white drapery clinging to him.
In a little time the artist said:
“There; that will do. Ten such sittings and my ‘King of Ys’ will have
its day with the world. I’d give two fortunes for the chance of it.”
The woman’s heart had beat fast with Gaston’s arm around her. He felt
the thrill of the situation. Man, woman, and horse were as of a piece.
But Cerise knew, when Gaston let her to the ground again, that she had
not conquered.