BEING THE TRUE REPORT OF A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER
For she hath breathed celestial air,
And heavenly food hath been her fare,
And heavenly thought and feelings give her face
That heavenly grace.
--Southey: _The Curse of Kehama_.
Sometimes a mattress is doubtless as efficient a means of pressing
one's clothes as any other means, but doubtless always a good deal
depends upon the mattress. By way of general rules, it may be laid
down, for instance, that the mattress employed must not be too thin,
must not be stuffed with a material so gregarious as to gather
together in lumpy communities, and must not sag in the middle.
Cartaret's mattress failed to meet these fundamental requirements, and
when he made his careful toilet on the morning that he was to take
_dejeuner_ at the Room Across the Landing, he became uneasily aware
that his clothes betrayed certain evidences of what had happened to
them. He had been up half a dozen times in the night to rearrange the
garments, in fear of just such a misfortune; but his activities were
badly repaid; the front of the suit bore a series of peculiar
wrinkles, rather like the complicated hatchments on an ancient
family's escutcheon; he could not see how, when the coat was on him,
its back looked, and he was afraid to speculate. With his mirror now
hung high and now standing on the floor, he practiced before it until
he happily discovered that the wrinkles could be given a more or less
reasonable excuse if he could only remember to adopt and assume a
mildly Pre-Raphaelite bearing.
Something else that his glass showed him gave him more anxiety and
appeared beyond concealment: Chitta's claws had left two long
scratches across his right cheek. He had no powder and no money to buy
any. He did think of trying a touch of his own paint, but he feared
that oils were not suited to the purpose and would only make the
wound more noticeable. He would simply have to let it go.
He had wakened with the first ray of sunlight that set the birds to
singing in the garden, and, Chitta's fall of the previous evening
having spilled his coffee and devastated his supplies, he was forced
to go without a _petit dejeuner_. He found a little tobacco in one of
his coat-pockets and smoked that until the bells of St. Sulpice, after
an unconscionable delay, rang the glad hour for which he waited.
Chitta opened the door to his knock, and he was at once aware of her
mistress standing, in white, behind her; but the old duenna was aware
of it too and ordered herself accordingly. Chitta bowed low enough to
appease the watchful Lady of the Rose, but Chitta's eyes, as she
lowered them, glowered at him suspiciously. It was clear that she by
no means joined in the welcome that the Lady immediately accorded him.
The Lady, in clinging muslin and with a black lace scarf of delicate
workmanship draped over her black hair, gave him her hand, and this
time Cartaret was not slow to kiss it. The action was one to which he
was scarcely accustomed, and he hesitated between the fear of being
discourteously brief about it and the fear of being discourteously
long. He could be certain only of how cool and firm her hand was and,
as he looked up from it, how pink and fresh her cheeks.
It was then that the Lady saw the scratches.
"Oh, but you have had an accident!" she cried.
Cartaret's hand went to his face. He looked at Chitta: Chitta's
returning glance was something between an appeal and a threat, but a
trifle nearer the latter.
"I had a little fall," said Cartaret, "and I was scratched in
falling."
The room was bare, but clean and pleasant, fresh from the constant
application of Chitta's mop and broom, fresher from the Spring breeze
that came in through the front windows, and freshest from the presence
of the Lady of the Rose. Two curtained corners seemed to contain beds.
At the rear, behind a screen, there must have been a gas-stove where
Chitta could soon be heard at work upon the breakfast. What furniture
there was bore every evidence of being Parisian, purchased in the
Quarter; there was none to indicate the nationality of the tenants;
and the bright little table, at which Cartaret was presently seated so
comfortably as to forget the necessity of the Pre-Raphaelite pose, was
Parisian too.
"You must speak French," smiled the Lady--how very white her teeth
were, and how very red her lips!--as she looked at him across the
coffee-urn: "that is the sole condition that, sir, I impose upon you."
"Willingly," said Cartaret, in the language thus imposed; "but why,
when you speak English so well?"
"Because"--the Lady was half serious about it--"I had to promise
Chitta that, under threat of her leaving Paris; and if she left Paris,
I should of course have to leave it, too. French she understands a
little, as you know, but not English, and"--the Lady's pink
deepened--"she says that English is the one language of which she
cannot even guess the meaning when she hears it, because English is
the one language that can be spoken with the lips only, and spoken as
if the speaker's face were a mask."
He said he should have thought that Chitta would pick it up from her.
"Why," he said, "it comes so readily to you: you answered in it
instinctively that time when I first saw you. Don't you remember?"
"I remember. I was very frightened. Perhaps I used it when you did
because we had an English governess at my home and speak it much in
the family. We speak it when we do not want the servants to
understand, and so we have kept it from Chitta." She was pouring the
coffee. "Tell me truly: do I indeed speak it well?"
"Excellently. Of course you are a little precise."
"How precise?"
"Well, you said, that time, 'It is I'; we generally say 'It's
me'--like the French, you understand."
If Princesses could pout, he would have said that she pouted.
"But I was right."
"Not entirely. You weren't colloquial."
"I was correct," she insisted. "'It is I' is correct. My grammar says
that the verb 'To be' takes the same case after it as before it. If
the Americans say something else, they do not speak good English."
Cartaret laughed.
"The English say it, too."
"Then," said the Lady with an emphatic nod, "the English also."
It was a simple breakfast, but excellently cooked, and Cartaret had
come to it with a healthy hunger. Chitta was present only in the
capacity of servant; but managed to be constantly within earshot and
generally to have hostess and guest under her supervision. He felt her
eyes upon him when she brought in the highly-seasoned omelette, when
she replenished the coffee; frequently he even caught her peeping
around the screen that hid the stove. It was a marvel that she could
cook so well, since she was forever deserting her post. She made
Cartaret blush with the memory of his gift to her; she made him feel
that his gift had only increased her distrust; when he fell to talking
about himself, he made light of his poverty, so that, should Chitta's
evident scruples against him ever lead her to betray what he had done,
the Lady might not feel that he had sacrificed too much in giving so
little.
Nevertheless, Cartaret was in no mood for complaint: he was sitting
opposite his Princess and was happy. He told her of his life in
America, of football and of Broadway. It is a rare thing for a lover
to speak of his sister, but Cartaret even mentioned Cora.
"Is she afraid of you, monsieur?" asked the Lady.
"I can't imagine Cora being afraid of any mere man."
"Ah," said the Lady; "then the American brothers are different from
brothers in my country. I have a brother. I think he is the
handsomest and bravest man in the world, and I love him. But I fear
him too. I fear him very much."
"Your own brother?"
The Lady was giving Cartaret some more omelette. Cartaret, holding his
ready plate, saw her glance toward the rear of the room and saw her
meet the eyes of Chitta, whose face was thrust around the screen.
"Yes," said the Lady.
It struck Cartaret that she dropped her brother rather quickly. She
talked of other things.
"Your name," she said, "is English: the concierge gave it me. It is
English, is it not?"
She had made enquiries about him, then: Cartaret liked that.
"My people were English, long ago," he answered. He grew bold. He had
been a fool not to make enquiries about her, but now he would make
them at first hand. "I don't know your name," he said.
He saw her glance again toward the rear of the room, but when he
looked he saw nobody. The Lady was saying:
"Urola."
It helped him very little. He said;
"That sounds Spanish."
Instantly her head went up. There was blue fire in her eyes as she
answered:
"I have not one drop of Spanish blood; not one."
He had meant no offense, yet it was clear that he came dangerously
near one. He made haste to apologize.
"You do not understand," she said, smiling a little. "In my country we
hate the Spaniard."
"What is your country?"
It was the most natural of questions--he had put it once before--yet
he had now no sooner uttered it than he felt that he had committed
another indiscretion. This time, when she glanced at the rear of the
room, he distinctly saw Chitta's head disappearing behind the screen.
"It is a far country," said Mlle. Urola. "It is a wild country. We
have no opportunities to study art in my country. So I came to Paris."
After that there was nothing for him to do but to be interested in
her studies, and of them she told him willingly enough. She was very
ambitious; she worked hard, but she made, she said, little progress.
"The people that have no feeling for any art I pity," she said; "but,
oh, I pity more those who want to be some sort of artist and cannot
be! The desire without the talent, that kills."
Chitta was coming back, bearing aloft a fresh dish. She bore it with
an air more haughty than any she had yet assumed. Directing at
Cartaret a glance of pride and scorn, she set before her
mistress--Cartaret's strawberries.
The Lady clapped her pretty hands. She laughed with delight.
"This," she said, "is a surprise! I had not known that we were to have
strawberries. It is so like Chitta. She is so kind and thoughtful,
monsieur. Always she has for me some surprise like this."
"It is a surprise," said Cartaret. "I'm sure I'll enjoy it."
She served the berries while Chitta stalked away.
"I find," confessed the Lady in English, "that they are not so good
below as they seemed on the top. You will not object?"
Oh, no: Cartaret wouldn't object.
"I suppose," said Mlle. Urola, "that I should reprimand her, for their
quality is"--she frowned at the berries--"inferior; but I have not the
heart. Not for the whole world could I hurt her feelings. She is both
so kind and so proud, and she is such a marvel of economy. You, sir,
would not guess how well she makes me fare upon how small an expense."
After breakfast, she showed him some examples of her work. It had
delicacy and feeling. An unprejudiced critic would have said that she
had much to learn in the way of technique, but to Cartaret every one
of her sketches was a marvel.
"This," she said, again in English, as she produced a drawing from the
bottom of her bundle, "does not compare with what you did, sir, but
it is not the work of a flatterer, since it is my own work. It is I."
It was a rapid sketch of herself and it was, as she had said, the work
of no flatterer.
"I like that least of all," declared Cartaret, in the language to
which she had returned; but he wanted her to forget those portraits he
had made. He caught, consequently, at trifles. "Why don't you say
'It's me'?" he asked.
She clasped her hands behind her and stood looking up at him with her
chin tilted and her unconscious lips close to his.
"I say what is right, sir," she challenged.
He laughed, but shook his head.
"I know better," said he.
"No," she said. She was smiling, but serious. "It is I that am right.
And even if I learned that I were wrong, I would now not change. It
would be a surrender to you."
Cartaret found his color high. His mind was putting into her words a
meaning he was afraid she might see that he put there.
"Not to me," he said.
"Yes, yes, to you!"
Surrender! What a troublesome word she was using!
The chin went higher; the lips came nearer.
"A complete surrender, sir." Quickly she stepped back. If she had read
his face rightly, her face gave no hint of it, but she was at once her
former self. "And that I will never do," she said, reverting to
French.
It was Cartaret's turn to want to change the subject. He did it
awkwardly.
"Have you been in the Bois?" he asked.
No, she had not been in the Bois. She loved nature too well to care
for artificial scenery.
"But the Bois is the sort of art that improves on nature," he
protested; "at least, so the Parisian will tell you; and, really, it
is beautiful now. You ought to see it. I was there last night."
"You go alone into the Bois in the night? Is not that dangerous?"
He could not tell whether she was mocking him. He said:
"It isn't dangerous in the afternoons, at any rate. Let me take you
there."
She hesitated. Chitta was clattering dishes in the improvised kitchen.
"Perhaps," said the Lady.
Cartaret's heart bounded.
"Now?" he asked.
The dishes clattered mightily.
"How prompt you are!" she laughed. "No, not now. I have my lessons."
"To-morrow, then?"
"Perhaps," said the Lady of the Rose. "Perhaps----"
Cartaret's face brightened.
"That is," explained his hostess, "if you will not try to teach me
English, sir."