C'est la Vie
"Les querelles ne dureraient pas longtemps si le tort
n'était d'un côté."
Monsieur Alphonse Giraud, unlike many men, had an aim in life--a daily
purpose with which he rose in the morning at, it must be admitted, a
shockingly late hour--without which he rarely sought his couch even
when it was not reached until the foolish birds were astir.
The son of the celebrated Baron Giraud sought, in a word, to be
mistaken for an Englishman--and what higher ambition could we, who
modestly set such store upon our nationality, desire him to cherish?
In view of this praiseworthy object, Alphonse Giraud wore a mustache
only, and this--oh! inconsistency of great minds--he laboriously
twirled heavenwards in the French fashion. It was, in fact, the
guileless Alphonse's chief tribulation that, however industriously he
cultivated that devil-may-care upward sweep, the sparse ornament to
his upper lip invariably drooped downwards again before long. In the
sunny land of France it is held that the mustache worn "en croc" not
only confers upon its possessor an air of distinction, but renders
that happy individual particularly irresistible in the eyes of the
fair. Readers of modern French fiction are aware that the heroes of
those edifying tales invariably wear the mustache "hardiment
retroussée," which habit doubtless adds a subtle charm to their
singularly puerile and fatuous conversation imperceptible to the mere
reader.
Alphonse Giraud was a small man, and would have given a thousand
pounds for another inch, as he frankly told his friends. His outward
garments were fashioned in London, whence also came his hats, gloves
and boots. But within all these he was hopelessly and absolutely
French. The English boots trod the pavement--they knew no other path
in life--in a manner essentially Gallic. The check trousers, of a
pattern somewhat loud and startling, had the mincing gait in them of
any "pantalon de fantasie," purchased à prix fixe in the Boulevard St.
Germain, across the water. It is useless to lift a Lincoln and Bennett
from a little flat-topped head, cut, as they say, to the rat and
fringed all over with black, upright hair.
But young Giraud held manfully to his purpose, and even essayed to
copy the attitudes of his own groom, a thin-legged man from Streatham,
who knew a thing or two, let him tell you, about a 'oss. There was no
harm in Alphonse. There is, indeed, less harm in Frenchmen than
they--sad dogs!--would have you believe. They are, as a rule,
domesticated individuals, with a pretty turn for mixing a salad.
Within the narrow but gay waistcoat of this son of Paris there beat as
kind a little eager French heart as one may wish to deal with.
"Bon Dieu!" Alphonse would exclaim, when convinced that he had been
robbed or cheated. "What will you? I am like that. I daresay the poor
devil wanted the money badly--and I do not miss it."
There is a charity that gives, and another that allows the needy to
take.
It was the Baron Giraud's great desire that Alphonse should be a
gentleman of the great world, moving in his narrow orbit in the first
circles of Parisian society, which was nothing to boast of in those
days, and has steadily declined ever since. To attain such an
eminence, the astute financier knew as well as any that only one thing
was really necessary--namely, money. This he gave to his son with an
open hand, and only gasped when he heard whither it went and how
freely Alphonse spent it.
"There is plenty more," he said, "behind." And his little porcine eyes
twinkled amid their yellow wrinkles. "I am a man of substance. You
must be a man of position. But do not lend to the wrong people. Rather
give to the right and be done with it. They will take it--bon Dieu!
You need not shake your head. There is no man who will refuse money if
you offer him enough."
And who shall say that the Baron Giraud was wrong?
A young man possessing a light heart and a heavy purse will never want
a friend in this kind world of ours. And Alphonse Giraud possessed,
moreover, a few of the better sort of friends, who had well-filled
purses of their own, and wanted nothing from him but his gay laugh and
good-fellowship. These were true friends, who did not scruple to tell
him, when they encountered him in the Bois de Boulogne, afoot or on
horseback, that while the right-hand side of his mustache was most
successfully en croc, the other extremity of the ornament pointed
earthwards. And, let it be remembered, that to tell a man of a defect
in his personal appearance is always a doubtful kindness.
"Ah, heavens!" Alphonse would exclaim to these true comrades, "I have
evil luck, and two minutes ago I bowed to the beautiful Comtesse de
Peudechose in her buggy."
Alphonse affected the society of Englishmen, was a member of the clubs
frequented by the sons of Albion resident in Paris, and sought the
society of the young gentlemen of the Embassy. It was in the
apartments of one of these that he made the acquaintance of Phillip
Gayerson, a young fellow intended for the diplomatic service. Phillip
Gayerson, be it known at once, was the brother of that Isabella
Gayerson to whose hand, heart and estate the present chronicler was
accredited by a fond father, and about whom, indeed, he had quarrelled
with the author of his being.
The name of Dick Howard being at that time unknown to the little
Frenchman, Alphonse Giraud made no mention of it to Gayerson a
self-absorbed man, who had probably forgotten my existence at this
time.
My countryman, as I afterwards learned, had come to Paris with the
object of learning the language, which by reason of its subtlety lends
itself most readily to diplomatic purposes, the most expressive
language, to my thinking, that the world has yet evolved, not
excepting the much-vaunted tongue in which Homer wrote. Phillip and I
had been boys together, and of all the comrades of my youth I should
have selected him the last to distinguish himself in statecraft. He
was a quiet, unobservant, and, as previously noted, self-absorbed man,
with a sense of the picturesque, which took the form of mediocre
water-colour sketching. His appearance was in his favour, for he was
visibly a gentleman; a man, moreover, of refined thought and habit,
whom burly Norfolk squires dubbed effeminate.
Alphonse Giraud liked him--the world is sunny to those who look at it
through sunny eyes--and took him up, as the saying goes, without
hesitation. He procured for him an invitation to a semi-state ball,
held, as some no doubt remember, in the autumn of 1869. It was Lucille
de Clericy's first ball, and Giraud renewed there a childish
friendship with one whose hair he confessed to have pulled in the
unchivalrous days of his infancy.
Alphonse, who was of a frank nature, as are many of his countrymen,
told Madame de Clericy, whom he escorted to the refreshment room after
dancing with her daughter, that he loved Lucille.
"But my dear Alphonse," retorted that lady, "you had forgotten her
existence until this evening."
This objection to his passion the lightsome Alphonse waived aside with
a perfectly gloved little hand.
"But," he answered earnestly, "unknown to myself her vision must
always have been _here_."
And he touched his shirt-front with the tips of his fingers gently,
remembering the delicacy of his linen.
"It is an angel!" he added, with an upward glance of his bright little
eyes, and tossed off a glass of champagne cup.
Madame de Clericy sipped her coffee slowly, and said nothing; but her
eyes travelled downward from the crown of her companion's head to his
dapper feet. And during that scrutiny there is little doubt that she
reckoned the value of Monsieur Alphonse Giraud. What she saw was a
pleasant spoken young man, plus twenty thousand pounds a year. No
wonder the Vicomtesse smiled softly.
"And I," went on the Frenchman in half humorous humility, "what am I?
Not clever, not handsome, not even tall!"
The lady shrugged her shoulders.
"_C'est la vie_," she said; a favourite reflection with her.
"Yes, and life and I are equal," replied Alphonse, with his gay laugh.
"We are both short! And now I wish to present to you and to Lucille my
best friend, Phillip Gayerson. He stands over there by the table, he
in English clothes. He only arrived in Paris ten days ago, and speaks
French indifferently. But he is charming, quite charming, my dearest
friend."
"Did you know him before he came to Paris?"
"Oh, no! Excuse me. I will bring him."
Madame made no remark, but watched Giraud with her quiet smile as he
went to seek this dear friend of eight days' standing.
Phillip Gayerson was distinguished by a slight shyness. It was as
little known or understood in Paris in the decadent days of the Second
Empire as it is now in the time of our own social collapse in England.
Thus, when the introduction was complete, Phillip Gayerson found that
he had nothing to say to this elderly French lady, and was glad when
Lucille came up, radiant on the arm of her partner. Alphonse presented
his friend at once, and here Phillip felt more at his ease, being a
better dancer than talker, and asked for the honour of a waltz without
delay.
"I have but two left," answered Mademoiselle de Clericy, with a gay
glance of happiness towards her mother. "They are at the end of the
programme, and I promised to reserve them for Monsieur Howard."
She handed him her engagement card, in frank confirmation of this
statement.
"R. H.," said Gayerson, deciphering the initials Lucille herself had
scribbled. "If this is Dick Howard I will take the first of his two
dances, and risk the consequence. It will not be the first time that
Dick and I have fallen out."
[Illustration: "THEN YOU KNOW MR. HOWARD?" SAID LUCILLE, WITH ANOTHER
GLANCE AT HER MOTHER. "YES," ... ANSWERED GAYERSON, BUT HAD NO TIME
FOR MORE, FOR THE NEXT DANCE WAS GIRAUD'S, WHO WAS ALREADY BOWING
BEFORE HER, AS BEFORE A DEITY.]
He wrote his name over mine, and returned the card to its owner.
"Then you know Mr. Howard?" said Lucille, with another glance at her
mother.
"Yes," ... answered Gayerson, but had no time for more, for the next
dance was Giraud's, who was already bowing before her, as before a
deity.
Madame de Clericy made a little movement, as if to speak to Gayerson,
but that young gentleman failed to see the gesture, and moved away to
find his partner for the coming waltz.
With the great people gathered at this assembly we have nothing to do,
though the writer and the reader, no doubt, love to rub elbows with
such lofty persons, if it be only in a public room. Many of them, be
it noted, were not nearly so important as they considered themselves,
and the greatness of some was built upon a base too frail to withstand
the storm and stress of the coming years.
Through the brilliant throng Lucille moved gaily and happily, taking,
with the faith of youth, dross for gold, and a high head for the token
of a noble heart. When Phillip Gayerson claimed his dance he found her
a little tired, but still dazzled and excited by the brilliance of the
occasion.
"Is it not splendid?" she exclaimed, taking his arm. "It is my first
ball. I am sure I shall never be too old to dance, as mother says she
is. Is it not absurd to say such a thing?"
Gayerson laughed, and as was his wont--a habit, indeed, with many shy
men--came straight to the point.
"Do you know Dick Howard, then?" he asked.
"Yes, a little. Has he arrived? This is his dance, you know."
"I cannot tell you if he has arrived, Mademoiselle," answered the
Englishman, in his halting French. "I know him at home--in Norfolk. I
was not aware that he was in Paris. But he will not be here to-night."
"Why?"
"Because his father is dead."
Lucille said nothing. She obeyed the movements of his arm, and they
danced, mingling with that gay throng, where the feet were lighter
than the hearts, we may be sure. They went through the whole dance in
silence, as Phillip afterwards told me--and he tried in vain to engage
Lucille's full attention to matters of passing interest.
"We must find my mother," she said at length, when the music had
ceased. "Mr. Howard does not know. He has been travelling in the South
with my father. His letters have not been forwarded to him."
Phillip Gayerson guided his partner through the laughing throng.
"It will be bad news for Dick," he said, "for his father has left him
penniless."
"I understood," observed Lucille, looking attentively at her bouquet,
"that he was wealthy."
"No. He quarrelled with his father, who left him without a sou. But
Howard knew it before he quitted England."
Lucille did not speak again until they had joined her mother, to whom
she said something so hurriedly that Gayerson did not catch the import
of her words.
At this moment I entered the room, and made my way towards them,
feeling more fit for my bed than a ball-room, for I had travelled
night and day to dance a waltz with Lucille. As I approached, Gayerson
bowed to the ladies and took his departure.
"My dance, Mademoiselle," I said, "if you have been so kind as to
remember it."
"Yes," answered Lucille, coldly as it seemed, "but I am tired, and we
are going home."
I looked towards Madame, and saw something in her face, I knew not
what.
"Your arm, mon ami," she said, lifting her hand; "we had better go
home."