Reboux', that's who _she_ is. If she _could_ have trimmed hats you can
bet your life Reboux would have developed her years ago. Reboux has
candles burning in every church in Paris, praying Heaven to send her
apprentices that she can do something with! And if she _can't_ trim hats
you can bet your life old man Harbine is going to lose some money, a lot
of it in one clip, and he and Jimmy Hammond will part company with a
bang.'
"Well, I was over here in Paris when their great opening came off. But I
heard about it. Nothing lacked. They all but served free champagne. But
when I went back only a month later, the talk was already going around
among folks on the ins, that there was something the matter with the
Rellot collection. The women weren't just crazy about the hats and the
modistes wouldn't look at them. Later on, what was left of them were
sent down to South America--Colombia, I think. Women just hatching out
from mantillas will stand for anything with a French label on it! And
that summer Jimmy Hammond decided he'd go in for life-insurance."
When he had talked as long as this I was usually the only person left
listening, the rest having yawned, turned to each other, or melted away.
But I listened, always, open-mouthed with astonishment and wonder.
Before putting on my hats in those days I used to look at them hard,
with respect, almost with alarm, feeling heavy on my head the weight of
their unsuspected significance. Wondering what the great expert's
opinion would be about the plain, everyday hats of ordinary women I
asked him one day: "Tell me, can you descend to small beer? What do you
think of the hats you see, not in those wonderful, silk-hung studios,
but those you see on the heads of the women in the streets, on mine? Is
this hat I have on stylish? I warn you I bought it off a counter for
less than four dollars."
He answered instantly, without giving a glance at my headgear: "You are
a healthy, normal woman and you're wearing it. Of course it's in style.
If it weren't, and you had to wear it, you'd be sick abed."
"You exaggerate, you are always exaggerating," I protested. "You only
know women who _care_ about the styles. I never bother my head about my
hats! I just walk into almost any shop and buy the first hat that
doesn't make me look too queer."
"You don't have to bother yourself about it," he told me, his accent
tinged with weary bitterness. "_We_ do the bothering! Months beforehand.
An army of us, able-bodied men, smart women, pretty young girls, we all
of us give up our lives to fixing things so you can walk into most any
shop and pick up most any hat and find it doesn't make you look too
'queer,' which is your way of saying that it doesn't make you look out
of style."
"There are moments," I told him, in a half-serious indignation, "when I
find you too absurd for words, the victim of the most absurd
hallucinations! All this portentous talk about the world-wide conspiracy
to make people keep up with the style. As if the style had any
importance for sensible people!"
"If you knew more about the capital and brains that are invested in that
conspiracy, you'd take it seriously, all right," he assured me with
melancholy, "and as for not taking the styles seriously, how many
thousand dollars would it take to pay you to go around in the street one
day, just one day, in the big bustle your mother used to be ashamed to
go outdoors without?"
I lost myself in horrified contemplation of the grotesque vision he had
conjured up and forgot to refute him. Perhaps I couldn't.
Towards the end of his stay he was very much troubled by persistent
rumors that the boat on which he was to sail would be torpedoed on the
way to New York. He acknowledged, with the fatigued frankness of his
sixty years past, that he was mortally afraid of the passage and that
his fear would deprive him of sleep all the way over. "No sane man
likes to be killed," he complained, "let alone be blown up and burned to
death and drowned into the bargain! I'm a family man! I want to go on
earning a living for my wife and children!"
The evening before he went away he was so fretful about this and so
outspoken about his dread, that I asked him, "Why don't you wait over a
boat?"
"Oh, what's the use? One boat's as likely to go down as another. And,
anyhow, I've got to get home. And then come over again for the next
season, curse the luck!"
I thought him again a little absurd. "Oh, come, the heavens wouldn't
fall if you missed one or two seasons!"
He turned grave, and after a moment's hesitation, opened a door which I
had thought locked and nailed up, and showed me that the room in his
heart which I had thought was certainly empty and vacant was a queer,
dimly lighted little chapel, with queer, dim little candles burning
before what was recognizably an ideal.
"Oh, it's no time for anybody to lie down on the job," he said offhand.
I did not dream that he was referring to the war. I had become convinced
that his curious, specialized world held no place for the horror and
apprehension which filled the lives of the rest of us. Nor had I ever
seen him give any signs of the shocked pity which most people feel at
the sight of the war-maimed men, the black-clad, white-faced
war-orphans and the widows with blurred eyes. I had thought he saw in
France, only and uniquely, hats. So I asked in genuine ignorance of his
meaning: "How do you mean, this being no time to lie down on the job?
What job?"
He sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling; thereafter, as he
talked, transferring his gaze to his finger-tips, joined with nicety.
"Well, I guess I mean something about like this. If we humans are to get
on at all, get any further away from having tails and living in trees,
we've got to knock down the partitions and make one big room of the
world, the same way each nation is one big room, with the blacksmith
trading his horseshoes for clothes and not trying to be a tailor
himself. Take farmers. Maybe you can't remember, but _I_ can, when old
farmers in Connecticut raised nearly every single thing they used all
the year around, and were proud of being such idiots. Nowadays the
Connecticut farmer don't waste his time trying to grow corn in a climate
where you're liable to get frosts in early September; he leaves the
farmer in Iowa to do that, and he raises the best apples in the world
and with the money he makes that way, he buys him oranges that a Florida
farmer has raised. It's my opinion that we've got to come to that on a
big, big scale. And if we do come to it there won't be any more wars.
Now, I don't know anything about anything but hats, and so I don't try
to have an opinion about the League of Nations, nor how the trick is
going to be turned by the statesmen--if there are any such--but if it
_is_ going to be turned, it's going to take everybody's shoulder to the
wheel, you can be sure. And I've got a shoulder. What's got to be done
is to get it through everybody's head that every nation ought not to
learn to produce anything but what it can produce best, and that
self-defense ought not to force it to make a botch of trying to do what
another nation could do better. Now, _one_ of the things that France can
produce better than other people (and it happens to be the thing that I
know about) is hats. I don't know whether it's because she's been at the
business of running the styles so long, so much longer than anybody else
so that she's got all her fibers settled together, just right to catch
the note, the way the wood in an old violin trembles all over at sounds
that leave the wood in the leg of a chair perfectly calm. Mind, I don't
say the violin is any more important than a chair. As far as I'm
concerned personally, if I had to choose I'd rather have the chair. What
I'm trying to say is that they are _different_. And we've got to get
used to the idea that _because things are different it doesn't mean one
is better than the other and they ought both to be like the best one_.
Now, maybe it's the other way around, that France has been at this
business of setting styles so long because she's had the gift to begin
with. Anyhow, what's sure is that they do it better, everything along
that line, ribbons, braids, straws, hats, dresses, furniture, houses,
parks--original designs don't come from anywhere but France. But France
is at war and pretty nearly gone under. She's got to make her designs
with one hand and fight for her life with the other."
He paused. "Well, I don't feel just like picking out that time to stop
coming to France to get her designs and to do my part to keep up the
taste for them, at home."
I found no sufficiently admiring comment to make on this, and kept a
respectful silence.
He went on, rubbing his hand back and forth over his gray hair: "But all
that is only my guess at it. What's my guess worth? Nothing. But it's
all I've got to go by, and so I _do_ go by it. I don't _know_ anything
about anything but hats, and I can't but just make a guess at them."
He folded his hands before him and sighed. "There is a lot too much in
hats for any one man to understand."
A HONEYMOON ... VIVE L'AMERIQUE!
I never knew many of the mere facts of their existence; where all their
money came from, nor the extraordinary romance which must have lain back
of them. Nor did I care to. They were too epic a pair for realism to
touch. I find on thinking them over that I never quite came to believe
in their actual existence; and yet, whatever value this slight sketch of
them may have will be due to its literal truthfulness to fact.
My first sight of them was on a very cold day in the second year of the
war when they suddenly filled with their resplendent presence the dreary
room which was known as my "office." For several difficult months,
against all the obstacles which made up everyday life in war-time
France, I had been laboring to organize and get into shape a Braille
printing establishment which would provide books for those most tragic
of war-victims, the blind. Together with a crew of devoted volunteers I
had tugged at the task, struggling like everybody else in France with a
universal shortage of supplies, which began with able-bodied men and ran
down to tacks and cheesecloth. There was also the difficulty of getting
the "Authorization from the Government" before drawing your breath; but
unless you have experienced this potent brake on enterprise, there is no
use trying to describe it to you.
And yet, somehow, we had managed to get along, had added to our two
plaque-making machines a couple of presses (very poor, both of them),
had scrambled together a home-made device for wetting and drying the
paper, had hunted down enough men to run the machines, had trained
enough proof-readers and assembled enough voluntary editors, so that
after a fashion we were really printing. The magazine, liberally bedewed
with our blood and sweat, came out once a month; and although the two
presses broke down with great frequency, we managed, by dint of
incessant repairing, to keep at least one in shape to do tolerable work.
We really had something patched-up, ungainly, but reasonably valid to
show the sightseers who came through on the weekly visiting day, when
all the rest of the institution was open to visitors.
I took my two Olympian guests for the usual idle, visiting-day couple. I
went the rounds with them, pointing out with a weary satisfaction our
various makeshifts. When I found that they listened receptively, I
indulged in considerable self-pity over our difficulties, past and
present. On their part they asked a good many pointed questions about
the business end of our enterprise, about the financial status of the
institution, about the probability of permanence for the venture. They
came back to the "office" with me, the goddess in sables taking the
solitary chair, while her mate sat down on the edge of my little table,
stretching out before him legs clad in cloth of a fineness I had
forgotten could exist. Quite casually, like the diamonds and pearls of
the fairy-tales, amazing words now issued from their lips. "See here,"
said he of the broadcloth overcoat, "this is no way to do business. You
can't get good work done with any such junk as those two presses! Why, I
wouldn't take them as a gift, not for old iron! And turned by
hand-power! Isn't that Europe for you? Why, for twenty-five cents a day
of electric current, you could do ten times the work you are doing now,
and have women run the presses! Go find a modern electric press that a
man can look at and not think he's Benjamin Franklin come to life again,
and let us know how much it costs."
He handed me his card as he spoke.
The goddess quitted my rickety, cane-bottomed chair and from her superb
height dropped down on me, "You know, the kind that opens and shuts its
jaws like a whale; perhaps you've seen them in printing establishments
at home." She tempered her assumption of my ignorance by a smile out of
the loveliest eyes imaginable and added: "My father was a printer out
West. I used to play 'round in his shop. That's how I happen to know."
Gazing up at her fascinated, I noted how deep the little lines of
kindliness were at the corners of her smiling gray eyes, and how, beyond
the usual conventional coating of powder, no effort had been made to
hide the fact that the beautiful face was not in its first youth. The
consequent effect of honesty and good faith was ineffable, and had its
perfect counterpart in the extraordinary simplicity and directness of
her gentle manner. She drew her regal fur up around her long neck and
her husband put his hat back on his thick white hair. "While you're
about it, you'd better get those two plaque-making machines
electrified," he remarked. "Any electrician could do it for you. There's
no sense in having your operators push down that pedal for every letter
they make. Man-power again! Europe!"
I realized that they were moving towards the door and shook myself out
of my entranced silence. "But you _can't_ buy a press of that kind in
Paris!" I called after them, all the bitterness of my past struggles in
my voice. "You can't buy anything in war-time France. There hasn't been
a press or anything else manufactured in France for two years! Don't you
know that all the factories are making munitions?"
Mr. Robert J. Hall--that was the name on the card--came back to me and
said earnestly: "Money can't _do_ everything, but I tell you that it can
buy anything buyable if you've got enough of it. Now we'll give you
money enough to buy that press. It's up to you to find it." From the
doorway his wife smiled to mitigate his intense seriousness and said
again, "It's the kind that opens and shuts its jaws, you know." The door
swung shut behind them to a last call-to-arms, "Go to it!" from Mr.
Hall.
Five minutes later a proof-reader coming found me still standing,
staring at their card.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
I took her by the arm. "Look here," I said, "did I just show two
visitors around the place?"
"Do you mean that awfully good-looking man with the white hair and the
royal-princess-effect in sables and eyes like Trilby's?"
I nodded, reassured. I had not dreamed them!
* * * * *
Of course I went to it. Of course I found the press. After such a
galvanic shock, I could have found, if that had been my need, a
featherbed on the Arc de l'Etoile. I have too many other things to tell
you about the Halls to describe the hunt after the press, although in
its way that was epic, too. Enough to say that after three weeks of
impassioned concentration on the subject during which I ate, drank,
slept, and lived printing-press, it was located, a second-hand one in
excellent condition, in a loft in the remotest corner of a remote
industrial region of Paris. It was quite exactly what we needed, a
thousand times better than anything we had dreamed of having. I felt
almost a reverent admiration to see it opening and shutting its great
jaw, and spewing out perfect raised-type pages, at least twelve times
faster than our wretched hand press; doing in one day the work of two
weeks!
But the price! Like all war prices it was five times what it was worth
when new. I hadn't the least idea that my extraordinary visitors would
buy it for us. Why in the world should they? In fact, by that time I
had gone back to thinking that I had dreamed them.
However, I betook myself to their hotel, into their private
sitting-room, bright with chintz and copper and flowers. I found Mrs.
Hall without her hat even lovelier than before, a little gray in her
thick soft hair as honestly shown as the faint, fine lines of simple
kindness in her clear skin. She wore a dark-blue satin dress richly
embroidered, evidently a creation from one of the great Paris houses.
She assured me cordially that she was awfully glad to see me.
Sitting on the edge of the Beauvais tapestry chair like the poor
relation on a begging expedition which I felt myself to be, I timidly
told of my search, trying to be amusing about it. Now that I was there I
dared not mention the price. Finally, however, having run out of
expedients to put off that dangerous moment, I brought out haltingly the
sum needed, and began to say, excusingly, that I thought I might get
_part_ of that from....
Mr. Robert J. Hall moved to the writing-table and took out a check-book.
"I'll tack another thousand francs on to that," he said over his
shoulder as he wrote, "I haven't been able to sleep nights for thinking
of those operators punching down the pedals by main strength and
awkwardness."
There was a silence as he wrote. Mrs. Robert J. Hall examined her
glistening nails, looked out of the window, and, with a tact for which I
was grateful, did not once glance at my face. I fancy that my
expression, instead of gratitude, must have been stupefaction. Mr. Hall
blotted his check, detached it, and handed it to me--the little bit of
blue paper through which I saw as in a vision hundreds of the terribly
needed raised-type books put into those terribly empty hands. I could
find no words at all. "It's ... it's just like a miracle!" I was
stammering, when some one knocked at the door, a timid, hesitating
knock, such as mine had been.
The sound seemed to alarm the Halls. "Good Lord, I bet it's the abbe!"
said Mr. Hall.
"You don't happen to speak French, do you?" asked his wife hastily. "Oh,
you do? It's all right then. It's the cure of a town in the war-zone and
we want to help him with some war-orphans, but we have the most awful
time trying to make him understand about business details. It's
perfectly terrible, not speaking the languages."
We turned to meet a short, elderly, double-chinned ecclesiastic who
carried his bulky body with the impersonal professional dignity of his
calling, but was not otherwise in the least impressive. The conversation
began.
It consisted of an attempt on the part of Mr. Hall to get the cure to
"come to the point," as he expressed it, and name a sum, and of
terror-stricken evasions on the part of the cure to do any such thing
for fear of losing their interest. This fencing centered about a large
house which the cure needed to fit up for the reception of a number of
war-orphans. "How much will it cost?" asked Mr. Hall patiently, over
and over, evidently seeing no reason for his not receiving a direct
answer. Upon my pressing the abbe hard, he finally brought out the sum,
miserably, in a faltering voice which made me want to shake his hand. I
knew how he felt.
The Halls consulted each other with a look of intimate understanding.
"All right," said the husband, "all right, _on condition_ that he can
get the funds from his diocese to keep the thing going if we set it on
foot." To me, he added: "The more we see of this sort of thing, the more
we see you've got to go slow at times. These Europeans are so
impractical that first thing you know they've used the money you give
them to get themselves into some fool scheme, without half seeing their
way through. We make it a rule not to give anything to a concern which
isn't on a good, sound, business basis. What's the use?"
I turned to the waiting priest, who had been wildly trying to guess from
our faces what we were saying, and translated Mr. Hall's philosophy of
philanthropy. I found a little difficulty in hitting on the exact French
phrase to express "a good, sound, business basis" but evidently I made
myself understood, because the old man's lips began to tremble eagerly.
"Oh yes, yes, madame, tell them that I can bring a letter to-morrow from
my bishop guaranteeing the support ... if only the house can be secured
and fitted up."
Mr. Hall sent back through me: "Well, you tell him that the minute he
shows me that letter from his bishop, I'll give him a check for the
house, and some over for extras."
I translated this exactly as it was said.
For an instant the cure kept a solemn silence, his eyes looking through
us and beyond. I knew what he was seeing, a big sheltering house with
happy, rescued children playing in the garden. The graceless, stout old
man looked very touching to me.
Then he came back to a sense of the inherent probabilities of things,
and appealed to me in a trembling voice, as to one who at least spoke
his language and to this degree was more of the real world than these
amazing strangers: "Are you sure you told them correctly? It is such a
great sum! And nobody else has been willing to ... Madame, do you ...
_do you really think they will do it_?"
I showed him the check still in my hand. "They have just given me this
for the war-blind," I said. I found my own voice not entirely steady.
Then it was my turn to look out of the window while he took his agitated
departure. I tried not to listen, but I could not help hearing that he
gave them his blessing. I wondered how he managed it, being but half
their height.
I was still at the window when he emerged from the hotel entrance into
the open square below. He stood looking up and down wildly, forgetting
to put his broad-brimmed, flat-crowned hat on his head although it was
raining. Then, as though at random, he crossed the wet asphalt and
vanished down a side street. He staggered a little as he walked. I knew
just how he felt.
When I turned back from the window, the Halls asked, offhand and as
though it would be doing them a favor, to accompany them on an
automobile trip out to the front, near St. Quentin. (I had been trying
vainly for three months to get a _sauf-conduit_ which would let me get
to the front.) "We want to take some money out to the villages the
Germans blew up when they retreated last month; and seeing how quick we
got the cure fixed up with somebody to talk French, we thought it would
be nice if you could go with us." This from Mrs. Hall. Her husband
continued, as if in explanation of a slightly eccentric taste: "You see,
we like to dodge the committee-and-report effect in war-relief. It takes
so long for those big shebangs to get into action, don't you think?
"And we like to manage so that the spending of the money we give isn't
in the hands of one of these self-satisfied young women in uniform who
know all about Elmira, New York, but do they about the Department of the
Aisne? It's unscientific, I know, but in such cases as these people who
have been cleaned out by the Germans, we like to put the money right in
the fists of the people who need it; and then go away and leave them to
spend it the way they want to. If my house burned down, I don't believe
I'd enjoy having a foreigner tell me how to build it over, and you
needn't tell me they like our ideas any better."
I was by this time in the state of silent stupor which was the effect
not infrequently produced on me by the Halls. I found no words to tell
them how precisely their invitation fell in with my wishes, and they
took my momentary hesitation for doubt. "We've got a _very_ comfortable
car," urged Mrs. Hall. "I don't think it would tire you much!"
And Mr. Hall added: "Honestly, it would make me a lot more satisfied if
you would. You haven't any idea what a fool you feel just to poke money
under people's noses and not be able to say anything to them!"