NEIGHBOURS.
“Chaque homme a trois caractères: celui qu'il a, celui qu'il
montre, et celui qu'il croit avoir.”
By one of the strokes of good fortune which come but once to the most
ardent student of fashion, the Baroness de Mélide had taken up horsiness
at the very beginning of that estimable craze. It was, therefore, in mere
sequence to this pursuit that she fixed her abode on the south side of
the Champs Elysées, and within a stone's throw of the Avenue du Bois de
Boulogne, before the world found out that it was quite impossible to live
elsewhere. It is so difficult, in truth, to foretell the course of
fashion, that one cannot help wondering why the modern soothsayers, who
eke out what appears to be a miserable existence in the smaller streets
of the Faubourg St. Honoré and in the neighbourhood of Bond Street, do
not turn their second-sight to the contemplation of the future of streets
and districts, instead of telling the curious a number of vague facts
respecting their past and vaguer prophecies as to the future.
If, for instance, Cagliostro had foretold that to-day the Chausée
d'Antin would be deserted; that the faubourg would have completely ousted
the Rue St. Honoré; that the Avenue de la Grande Armée should be,
fashionably speaking, dead after a short and brilliant life; and that
the little streets of the Faubourg St. Germain should be all that is most
_chic_--what fortunes might have been made! Indeed, no one in a trance
or in his right mind can tell to-day why it is right to walk on the
right-hand side of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Boulevard des
Capucines, and heinously wrong to walk on the left; while, on the
contrary, no self-respecting Parisian would allow himself to be seen on
the right-hand pavement of the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Indeed, these
things are a mystery, and the wise seek only to obey, and not to ask the
reason why.
It would be difficult to lay before the English reader the precise social
position of the Baroness de Mélide. For there are wheels within wheels,
or, more properly perhaps, shades within shades, in the social world of
Paris, which are quite unsuspected on this side of the Channel. Indeed,
our ignorance of social France is only surpassed by the French ignorance
of social England. The Baroness de Mélide was rich, however, and the
rich, as we all know, have nothing to fear in this world. As a matter of
fact, Monsieur de Mélide dated his nobility from Napoleon's creation, and
madame's grandfather was of the Emigration. By conviction, they belonged
to the Anglophile school, and theirs was one of the prettiest little
houses between the Avenue Victor Hugo and the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne,
which is more important than ancestors.
It was to this miniature palace that Mademoiselle Brun and Denise were
bidden, to the new function of afternoon tea, the day after the receipt
of the lawyer's letter. Madame de Mélide would take no denial.
“I have already heard of Denise's good fortune; and from whom do you
think?” she wrote. “From my dear good cousin, Lory de Vasselot, who is,
if you will believe it, a Corsican neighbour--the Vasselot and Perucca
estates actually adjoin. Both, I need hardly tell you, bristle with
bandits, and are quite impossible. But I have quite decided that Lory
shall marry Denise. Come, therefore, without fail. I need not tell you to
see that Denise looks pretty. The good God has seen to that for you. And
as for Lory, he is an angel. I cannot think why I did not marry him
myself--except that he did not ask me. And then there is my stupid, whom
nobody else would have, and who now sends his dear love to his oldest
friend.--Your devoted JANE.”
The Baroness de Mélide was called Jeanne, but she had enthusiastically
changed that name for its English version at the period when England was,
as it were, first discovered by social France.
When Mademoiselle Brun and Denise arrived, they found the baroness
beautifully dressed as usual, and very French, for the empress was at
this time the leader of the world's women, as the emperor--that clever
_parvenu_--was undoubtedly the first monarch in Europe. It behoves not a
masculine pen to attempt a description of Madame de Mélide's costume,
which, moreover, was of a bygone mode, and nothing is so unsightly in
death as a deceased fashion.
“How good of you to come!” she cried, embracing both ladies in turn, with
a fervour which certainly seemed to imply that she had no other friends
on earth.
In truth, she had, for the moment, none so dear; for there are certain
warm hearts that are happy in always loving, not the highest, but the
nearest.
“Let me see, now,” she added, vigorously dragging forward chairs. “I
asked some one to meet you--some one I particularly wanted you to become
acquainted with, but I cannot remember who it is.” As she spoke she
consulted a little red morocco betting-book.
“Lory!” she cried, after a short search. “Yes, of course it was Lory de
Vasselot--my cousin. And--will you believe it?--he saved my life the
other day, all in a moment! Yes! I saw death, quite close, before my
eyes. Ugh! And I, who am so wicked! You do not know what it is to be
wicked and to know it, Denise--you who are so young. But that dear
Mademoiselle Brun, she knows.”
“Thank you,” said mademoiselle.
“And Lory saved me, ah! so cleverly. There is no better horseman in the
army, they say. Yes; he will certainly come this afternoon, unless there
is a race at Longchamps. Now, is there a race, I wonder?”
“For the moment,” said Mademoiselle Brun, very gravely, “I cannot tell
you.”
“She is laughing at me,” cried the baroness, shaking a vivacious
forefinger at Mademoiselle Brun. “But I do not mind; we cannot all be
wise--eh?”
“And what a dull world for the rest of us if you were,” said Mademoiselle
Brun; and Lory de Vasselot, coming into the room at this moment, was met
by her sour smile.
“Ah!” cried the baroness, “here he is. I present you, my dear Lory, to
Mademoiselle Brun, a terrible friend of mine, and to Mademoiselle Lange,
who, as you know, has just inherited the other half of Corsica.”
“My congratulations,” answered Lory, shaking hands with Denise in the
English fashion. “An inheritance is so nice when it is quite new.”
“And figure to yourself that this dear child has no notion how it has all
come about! She only knows the bare fact that some one is dead, and she
has gained--well, a white elephant, one may suppose.”
De Vasselot's quick face suddenly turned grave.
“Ah,” he said, “then I can tell you how it has all come about. Though I
confess at once that I have never been to Corsica, and have never found
myself a halfpenny the richer for owning land there.”
He paused for a moment, and glanced at Mademoiselle Brun.
“Unless,” he interpolated, “such personal matters will bore
mademoiselle.”
“But mademoiselle is the good angel of Mademoiselle Lange, my dear, dull
Lory,” explained the baroness; and the object of the elucidation looked
at him more keenly than so trifling an incident would seem to warrant.
“You will not be betraying secrets to the first-comer,” she said.
Still de Vasselot seemed to hesitate, as if choosing his words.
“And,” he said at length, “they shot your cousin's agent in the back,
almost in the streets of Olmeta, and Mattei Perucca himself died
suddenly, presumably from apoplexy, brought on by a great anger at
receiving a letter threatening his life--that is how it has come about,
mademoiselle.”
He broke off short, with a quick gesture and a flash of his eyes, usually
so pleasant and smiling.
“I have that from a reliable source,” he went on, after a pause, during
which Mademoiselle Brun looked steadily at Denise and said nothing.
“Gracious heavens!” exclaimed the baroness, in a whisper; and for once
was silenced.
“A faithful correspondent on the island,” explained de Vasselot. “Though
why he is faithful I cannot tell you. Some family legend, perhaps--I
cannot tell. It is the Abbé Susini of Olmeta who has told me this. He it
was who told me of your--well, I can only call it your misfortune,
mademoiselle. For there is assuredly a curse upon Corsica as there is
upon Ireland. It cannot govern itself, and no other can govern it. The
Napoleons have been the only men to make anything of the island, but a
man who is driving a pair of horses down the Champs Elysées cannot give
much thought to his little dog that runs behind. And it is in the
Bonaparte blood to drive, not only a pair, but a four-in-hand in the
thickest traffic of the world. The Abbé Susini tells me that when the
emperor's hand was firm, Corsica was almost orderly, justice was almost
administered, banditism was for the moment made to feel the hand of the
law, and the authorities could count the number of outlaws evading their
grip in the mountains. But since the emperor's illness has taken a
dangerous turn things have gone back again. Corsica is, it seems, a
weather-glass by which one may tell the state of the political weather in
France; and now it is disturbed, mademoiselle.”
He had become graver as he spoke, and now found himself addressing Denise
almost as if she were a man. There is as much difference in listeners as
there is in talkers. And Lory de Vasselot, who belonged to the new school
of Frenchmen--the open-air, the vigorous, the sportsmanlike--found his
interlocutor listening with clear eyes fixed frankly on his face.
Intelligence betrays itself in listening more than in talking, and de
Vasselot, with characteristic and an eminently national intuition,
perceived that this girl from a covent school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi
was not a person to whom to address drawing-room generalities, and those
insults to the feminine comprehension which a bygone generation called
compliments.
“But a woman need surely have nothing to fear,” said Denise, who had the
habit of carrying her head rather high, and now spoke as if this implied
more than a mere trick of deportment.
“A woman! You are not going to Corsica, mademoiselle?”
“But I am,” she answered.
De Vasselot turned thoughtfully, and brought forward a chair. He sat down
and gravely contemplated Mademoiselle Brun, whose attitude--upright in a
low chair, with crossed hands and a compressed mouth--betrayed nothing. A
Frenchman is not nearly so artificial as the shallow British observer has
been pleased to conclude. He is, in fact, much more a child of nature
than either an Englishman or a German. Lory de Vasselot's expression said
as plainly as words to Mademoiselle Brun--
“And what have _you_ been about?”
It was so obvious that Mademoiselle Brun, almost imperceptibly, shrugged
one shoulder. She was powerless, it appeared.
“But, if you will permit me to say so,” said Lory, sitting down and
drawing near to Denise in his earnestness, “that is impossible. I will
not trouble you with details, but it is an impossibility. I understand
that Mattei Perucca and his agent were the two strongest men in the
northern district, and they only attempted to hold their own, nothing
more. With the result that you know.”
“But there are many ways of attempting to hold one's own,” persisted
Denise; and she shook her head with a wisdom which only belongs to youth.
De Vasselot spread out his hands in utter despair. The end of the world,
it seemed, was at hand. And Denise only laughed.
“And when I have regulated my own affairs, I will undertake the
management of your estate at a high salary,” she said.
“There is only one thing to do,” said Lory, gravely, “and I have done it
myself. I have abandoned the idea of ever receiving a halfpenny of rent.
I have allowed the land to go out of cultivation. The vine-terraces are
falling, the olive trees are dying for want of cultivation. A few
peasants graze their cattle in my garden, I understand. The house itself
is only saved from falling down by the fact that it is strongly built of
stone. I would sell for a mere song, if I could find a serious offer of
that trifle; but nobody buys land in Corsica--for the peasants recognize
no title deeds and respect no rights of ownership. I had indeed an offer
the other day, but it was undoubtedly a joke, and I treated it as such.”
“Denise also has had an offer to buy the Perucca property,” said
Mademoiselle Brun.
“Yes,” said Denise, seeing his surprise. “And you would advise me to
accept it?”
“If it is a serious one, most decidedly.”
“It is serious enough,” answered Denise. “It is from a Colonel Gilbert,
an officer stationed at Bastia.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed; and at that moment another caller entered the room,
and he rose with eager politeness.
So it happened that Mademoiselle Brun could not see his face, and was
left wondering what the exclamation meant.
Several other callers now appeared--persons of the Baroness de Mélide's
own world, who had a hundred society tricks, and bowed or shook hands
according to the latest mode. This was not Mademoiselle Brun's world, and
she was not interested to hear the latest gossip from that hotbed of
scandal, the Tuileries, nor did the ever-changing face of the political
world command her attention. She therefore rose, and stiffly took her
leave. De Vasselot accompanied them to the hall.
Denise paused in the entrance, and turned to him.
“Seriously,” she said, “do you advise me to accept this offer to sell
Perucca?”
“I scarcely feel authorized to give you any advice upon the subject,”
answered Lory, reluctantly. “Though, after all, we are neighbours.”
“Then--”
“Then, I should say not, mademoiselle. At all events, do nothing in
haste. And, if I may ask it, will you communicate with me before you
finally decide?”
They had come in an open cab, which was waiting on the shady side of the
street.
“A young man who changes his mind very quickly,” commented Mademoiselle
Brun, as they drove away.