I
Fat white clouds hurried over the pale blue roof of the rue de la Paix.
Spring, the first day before the first day of spring, the day that is
not spring but is a voice of spring crying in the wilderness of the
chilly heavens: “Here is spring, and lo! these are the clouds of winter
fleeing before her, white as polar bears, and as stupid. Enjoy, enjoy
_le printemps_!” Anxious the fat white clouds seemed, most anxious,
hurrying from the vanities of the rue de la Paix towards the Cathedral
of Our Lady, that they might pray, the poor clouds who know not that the
pagan gods are dead, the poor clouds, who love the winter, against the
return of Persephone from the arms of Plutus. The stormy brittle
sunlight, eager to play with the pearls and diamonds of Van Cleef,
Lacloche and Cartier, aye, and of Tecla also, chided away the fat white
clouds, and now the sun would play with one window of the rue de la
Paix, now with another, mortifying one, teasing another, but all in a
very handsome way.
Early the next morning it was when I found myself looking upon these
mighty diversions, but I had so much rather been asleep. My bedroom
looked down on these things, but unfortunately not from a great height,
for they are not tall, the hotels of Paris; and men are sent round the
streets of Paris first thing in the morning, to the end that people may
not fail to be aware of the beauty of shuttered shops, some of these men
being directed to push along enormous tin barrels with which to make a
_carmagnole_ of dust, whilst others are placed on ancient taxi-cabs with
especially adjusted gears and magnified horn-power. There is no peace in
the world, that is what it is. There is no peace in Paris.
I lay in bed, staring through the lace curtains. What had happened, what
were the alarums and excursions of that grey day yesterday, which had
leapt at me from the darkness as I made to return to England after four
months of pleasant wandering? Iris was ill unto death, Napier was
enchanted....
Men, some in shirt-sleeves, were taking down the heavy, grey,
burglar-proof shutters of the shops opposite. Set in the small windows
above the shops, the modistes’ assistants seemed to be talking and
talking. Some had hats in their nimble hands, some other things. It is
pleasant, maybe it is the only pleasant pastime that does not ever pall,
to see and not be seen. And now the shop windows began one and all to
glitter in the stormy brittle sunlight which transmuted the pearls and
diamonds on yellow velvet into celestial jewels fit to adorn the crown
of the word _printemps_, than which there is not a more beautiful word
in all the languages of the world. In the great window of _Edouard Apel
et Cie._, whence in the long ago had come to this person such polite but
manly notepaper, stood richly white and coloured papers, boxes of
lacquer, ebony, and cedarwood, flaming quills and great cut-glass
bottles for ink, and many another devise to make one realise how
pleasant writing must be for those who do not have to write. Before a
shop not far from Tecla’s which displayed the most charming baubles of
all and completely deceived the sun, two short dark Semitic men and a
lanky Semitic youth were having some difficulty with their shutters. The
shutters did not look new, far from new, but maybe, I thought, a new
burglar-proof arrangement has been wrought on them, and that would be
causing the difficulty. The traffic had as yet but caressed the rue de
la Paix, and through the open window one might hear the rising anger of
the two short Semitic men with the lanky Semitic youth, an anger which
seemed to call for and to attain a cuneiform language. Then a fourth
man, also in shirt-sleeves, came out of the shop, a patriarchal mountain
of a man with a great black beard and a mighty nose, who might that very
moment have come from a breakfast of dates in a tent over against Ur of
the Chaldees, and instantly I knew him for what he was, a millionaire.
Many were the race-horses he owned, and often you would see him at
Longchamps, talking to a beautiful woman in a deep voice about himself,
for that was a vain and terrible man, and the worst of it was that he
was always right about everything, whether it was a horse, a jewel, a
woman, an antique, or the fall of a card. With one look of his eye he
scattered the two short Semites and the lanky Semitic youth, who were
his two brothers and his son, who were also millionaires, and in a trice
he had those shutters off that window, and lo! there, royally alone
against terraces of dingy green velvet, sat a brown Buddha with what
looked like the largest emerald in the world in the middle of his
forehead, but maybe it was only the second largest. The last time I had
been in Paris there had been a golden chair in that window, golden arms
and legs and back and sit-piece and all, and so it was no wonder that
that man owned race-horses and said “Banquo!” to half-a-million francs
while yawning, and rightly, for he always won, as I know to my cost. And
one night he had come into the rooms at Cannes with a great ruby on his
finger. Only he would, of course, but apart from the ethics of the thing
it was an amazing ruby, crimson as blood and clear as a glass of
Burgundy. “But what a stone!” cried Billee Ponthéveque, a _cocotte_ who
sat at the table losing all the money that she earned by breaking every
Commandment but one, for she adored her father and mother and never
failed to put aside for them as much as she gave in tips to the
_croupiers_; but she never saw her parents, she would say, because of a
funny idea they had that it was bad for her health to take cocaine on an
empty stomach. “Yes, it is flawless,” said the deep voice of that
terrible man, shouting “Banquo!” as an after-thought to some poor devil
who thought he was going to get away unchallenged with fifty thousand
francs. “You can have it, child. Here you are.” But Billee Ponthéveque
had always a sense of the proprieties, and so, as the saying is among
the vulgar, she damned his blasted cheek for offering her so valuable a
present in public, but he said that made no matter, for it was just
because the ruby was flawless that it was quite valueless. “If only it
had the smallest flaw,” he boomed, “it would be beyond price, for any
one can counterfeit a flawless ruby so that no expert can tell it from
the original....”
“_De la par de Madame Arpenden_,” said a voice, and after the passage of
curses and catcalls which are peculiar to the telephones of Paris, I
heard Venice’s voice.
“Venice! Venice!”
“That will do,” she said. “Oh, that will do from you, thanks very much.
Naps told me he saw you last night in that odd place, but did I see
you?”
“You were asleep, Venice! But I am so glad to hear your voice after all
these months, you wouldn’t believe how glad. Venice, how are you?”
“I can’t tell you now, I have to buy things. Listen, child, will you
give me lunch to-day? Naps is busy for lunch. Listen, you must give me
lunch to-day. I hate Paris.”
“But Napier told me you were going South to-day!”
“Oh, Naps is mad!” A boyish voice, a very boyish voice Venice had, even
on a telephone in Paris. “Not dangerously mad, but just mad. I never
knew such a silly, one can’t ever arrange anything beforehand with him.
We are going by the evening train now, though we had everything booked
for the one this morning. Listen, are you going to give me lunch? Oh
that’s a dear. About one, here at the Meurice....”
“Venice!” I called, but she was gone, and I could see her striding
intently through the sombre halls of the Meurice, lovely Venice, like
sunlight, just like English sunlight. And keeping my mind to sunlight,
and avoiding all thoughts of death and dark enchantment, I said to
myself that I would stay in Paris now that I was in Paris, rather than
return to London, for over London lay a memorable fog, so said the
Continental _Daily Mail_, as also it said Hats Off To France, the
guileless thing....
“_De la par du Docteur Mastaire_,” said the telephone this time, and
there was that captain of men muttering, as he had promised he would in
return for my playing bridge till all hours for his sake, that there was
little change in Iris, but what little was for the better rather than
for the worse. “But don’t go thinking,” said he sharply enough, “that
she’s nearly out of the wood yet, because she isn’t. And, by the way,
she seems to want to see you, but remember that you’ll do her the worst
turn you can if you let that boy leave Paris to-day.”
“Yes, but,” I said, but I spoke only to the roar of the Parisian scene,
and I thought: “Oh, well! He isn’t going till the evening anyhow.” And,
still keeping my mind from dwelling on death and dark enchantments, I
renewed my decision to stay in Paris a while, no matter how bitterly my
sister might inveigh against me for letting her return to England
unaccompanied. By now the rue de la Paix was languishing brilliantly in
the stormy sunlight, and from my bath I could glimpse the cars lounging
up and down and women walking swiftly by, intent on errands of the
greatest importance and looking as attractive as only women can look
when they are not thinking of men, while Englishmen and Americans walked
seriously toward the chairs on the boulevards that they had read about
in Nash’s Magazine. Then my sister’s car passed by towards the Place de
l’Opera, and she sitting forward with an air of moment, the ferrule of
her parasol poised above the shoulder of the chauffeur, poor Mr.
Hebblethwaite, who hated the French so! “I will tell her,” I said, “that
I am regrettably detained in Paris owing to the call of my art, my Work,
for I have just thought of a tale about a man who would not dance with
his wife, and would you have me, I will put to her frankly, write a tale
like that in a London fog?”
And it was while debating with myself over this silly fancy about a man
who would not dance with his wife, for some good reason that I would no
doubt hit upon in due course, and while congratulating myself that I had
throughout the morning successfully avoided thinking of any of my
friends’ troubles, that I passed through the soft-carpeted and sombre
halls of the Meurice, towards Venice, towards Venice, where she sat in a
deep chair behind a paper, while in deep chairs all around sat people
drinking cocktails and talking in low voices. All people talk in low
voices when in the Meurice, and that, I dare venture to say, is one of
the amenities peculiar to the Meurice among the hotels of all the world;
but that is as it may be.