half-remembered substance of a dream. He had known nothing of her in the
life, for the breath of being had passed from her lips to his at the
moment of his birth, but with the intuition of childhood, he seemed to
know that this was one who would have loved him and whom he would have
loved. He spent hours before the picture, silent, spell-bound, gazing
into the deep and tender eyes that shone with the same pathetic pleading
that lay so eloquently in his own, and the only outbreak of rage which
had ever stirred his simple serenity was on one occasion when his nurse
had found him thus absorbed, and, receiving no response to her summons,
half alarmed and half indignant, reproached him with wasting his time
before a stupid picture. Then Pépin had whirled around upon her, his
lips compressed, his small brown hands clenched, and a look in his eyes
that terrified even the stout and prosaic Cornish-woman out of her
accustomed attitude of fat complacency.
"A stupid picture?" he stormed. "But it is my mother, do you hear, my
mother! You are a wicked woman, Elizabeth!"
It was when Pépin was nearing his seventh birthday that a wonderful
thing happened. The Comte was giving a great reception to the Russian
Ambassador, and on an impulse which, perhaps, even he himself could
hardly have explained, sent for his son. The child was aroused from
sleep, and, but half awake and totally uncomprehending, was submitted by
the worthy Elizabeth to a veritable cyclone of washing, combing, and
brushing, and finally, clad in spotless duck, was led by the maître
d'hôtel down the long corridor to the door of the grand salon, which, at
his approach, swung open under the touch of one of the under servants.
Pépin, dazed by the radiance of many lights and a great clamor of
voices, paused on the threshold, and, with a swift intuition of what was
demanded of him, made his slow, stiff bow.
"Le Vicomte de Villersexel," said the maître d'hôtel in a loud voice at
his side, and Pépin, seeing his father beckon to him from the group
where he stood, slipped close to him through the crowd, and was
surprised to find that the Comte took his hand in his, and bent forward
to say in a whisper,--
"You are to hear Pazzini play the violin. That is why I sent for you.
He was your mother's teacher."
Like all that had gone before, what followed was to Pépin like a
dream--a beautiful dream, never to be forgotten. A great hush had
settled upon the brilliant assemblage, for even in Paris there are still
things which society will check its chatter to hear, and the tall,
gray-bearded man, consulting with the pianist over there, was Pazzini,
the great Pazzini, whose services had been more than once commanded by
royalty in vain. De Villersexel had drawn Pépin nearer to the piano in
the brief interval, and as the opening chords of the introduction were
struck, he found himself but a few feet from the famous violinist, his
hand still linked in that of his father, his eyes fixed in wonder upon
this unknown man who had been his mother's teacher.
The first low note of the violin fell upon the silence like a faint, far
voice, heard across a wide reach of calm water, and, as the marvelous
melody swelled into the fullness of its motif, something new and strange
stirred in Pépin's heart, mounted and tightened in his throat, ran
tingling to his finger-tips. Through his half parted lips the breath
tiptoed in and out, and his deep eyes grew every instant, could he have
known it, more like those of the picture that he loved. So he stood
entranced, seeing, hearing nothing but Pazzini and Pazzini's violin,
till the sonata drew imperceptibly toward its close. Like the child, the
great violinist seemed to be unconscious of all that surrounded him.
Slowly, tenderly, he led his music through the last phrases, until he
paused before the supreme high sweetness of the final note. How it was
he could never have told, but, in that infinitesimal fraction of time,
the training of years played him false. He knew that his finger-tip
slipped an incalculable atom of space, but it was too late. The bow was
on the string, and the imperceptibly flatted note swelled, sank, and
died away, unrecognized, he thought, with a throb of thankfulness, by
any save his master ear. And then--
"_Ah-h!_" said Pépin.
The long ripple of applause drowned the child's whisper, and for an
instant the terror in his heart grew still, believing his exclamation
unheard. Then it leaped to life again, for Pazzini was looking at him,
his bow hovering above the instrument like his mother's in the picture.
In the mysterious solitude of the crowded room the eyes of these two
met, each reading the other's as they had been an open book, and in
Pépin's was the pain of a wounded animal, and in Pazzini's a great
wonder and sorrow, as of one who has hurt without intention, and mutely
pleads for pardon.
As the applause ceased, the violinist turned to the Comte, and pointed
to Pépin with his bow.
"Who is that child?" he asked.
The thaw in the de Villersexel's "academic manner" had been but
momentary. With the renewed hum of conversation he was himself again,
pale, proud, and immovable.
"It is my son, Pépin," he replied, with stiff courtesy. "How shall I
thank you for your playing? It was the essence of perfection, as it has
ever been, and ever will be."
But he could not know, as he turned away with Pépin, that in his heart
the violinist said, "Her boy! I understand!"
The miracle of his summons to the salon that night was not, as it
appeared, the actual climax of existence, for a new marvel awaited
Pépin on the morrow. The doors of the dining-room had barely slid
together behind them when the Comte turned to him.
"Yesterday was Christmas," he said.
Pépin made no reply. In fact, the stupor which descended upon him at
this infraction of the usual routine of life effectually deprived him,
for the moment, of the power of speech.
"It was Christmas," repeated the Comte, "and because of that you are
invited to a--a--soirée to-day. Do you know the English children on the
entresol?"
"I have seen them," faltered Pépin, "but we have never spoken. You told
me"--
"I have changed my mind," broke in his father. "Monsieur
'Ameelton"--stumbling desperately over the English name--"has asked me
to let you visit them this afternoon, and I have said yes to him.
Elizabeth will dress you. Now you may go."
Barely conscious that Pépin had added a timid "Merci, papa!" to his
customary bow, de Villersexel turned to his writing-table, as the door
closed behind the little Vicomte, and, unlocking a drawer, took
therefrom a letter which had come to him that morning, and, burying
himself in his arm-chair, proceeded to its careful reperusal. It was in
the fine Italian handwriting of Pazzini, and ran as follows:--
MY DEAR FRIEND,--This is to be at once a confession and a prayer.
What would you say if I were to tell you that Pazzini--the flawless
Pazzini, as men are pleased to call me!--murdered, yes, murdered
last night's sonata by flatting that wonderful final note? Oh, it
was a very little thing, and passed unnoticed, for they are stupid,
these wise people who listen to me, and they did not hear. Even you,
my poor friend, even you could not detect that tiny flaw that was a
monstrous crime. No, of all who listened, there were but two that
understood what I had done. I was one of these, and the other was
your son--Pépin.
Do you know what that means, Monsieur le Comte de Villersexel? Do
you understand that it is but one ear in millions that is so finely
keyed that this minutest deviation could wound it like the most
utter discord? And I wounded him, your Pépin. I saw it in his eyes.
Therefore I tell you--I, who know--that he is a genius, a genius
greater than his mother, and that, like her, he must be my pupil. I
have none other now. It shall be the work of my old age to make him
the greatest violinist of his day. Give him to me, my friend, if not
for his own sake, then for hers!
PAZZINI.
Prime feature of all the year to the little Hamiltons, on the entresol,
was their Christmas tree. It arrived in some unknowable way in the
corner of the grand salon on the morning after Christmas, and, from the
moment of its advent, the doors were sealed, and only the privileged
world of grown-ups went in and out, and could see the splendors within.
Inch by inch the hands of the tall clock in the antichambre dragged
themselves around successive circles toward the hour of revelation, and,
keyed to the snapping point of frenzy, the slender figure of George and
the round, squat form of John stood motionless before the inexorable
timepiece, awaiting the stroke of four. This suspense was harrowing
enough in itself, and only made bearable by recourse to occasional mad
caperings up and down the hall, and whoops of mingled ecstasy and
exasperation. What was worse was the delay in the arrival of their
guests. Later, the latter would be an indispensable part of the
festivities: just now they were mere impediments in the path of bliss.
Even the grown-ups were more considerate, and came on time. Well they
might, since they were granted immediate admission to the enchanted
room, and came out with maddening accounts of what was to be seen
therein. They sat about the small salon, and talked the stupid things of
which they were so fond of talking,--Hamilton, tall, straight, and with
an amused twinkle in his eyes, while he watched his wife vainly
endeavoring to calm her sons as they foamed and pranced at the sealed
doors; Miss Kedgwick, who wrote books, and invited boys to tea; Monsieur
de Bercy, who was odd because he spoke no English, but who cut heads out
of nuts and apples, and drew droll pictures on scraps of paper; Miss
Lys, who played the piano for "Going to Jerusalem;" and Mr. Sedgely, who
talked very low in her ear, and said the great trouble with "Going to
Jerusalem" was that the players couldn't go there in good
earnest--whatever that might mean.
But would the doors _never_ open?
The children arrived by twos and threes, shook hands limply with their
elders, greeted their small hosts with embarrassed ceremony, and then,
as if suddenly inoculated with the latter's madness, commenced to foam
and prance in their turn before the unyielding portals. Last of all came
Pépin, all brown, who bowed at the door, and then in turn to each of
those who spoke to him.
Suddenly, with a shout, the children burst through the opened doorway,
and gathered in voluble groups about the glistening miracle which shone
like a hundred stars in the gathering twilight. For a half hour all was
chaos, and Pépin, standing a little apart, marveled and was still.
Dancing figures whirled about him, bearing boxes of soldiers, toy
villages, dolls, trumpets, drums. The air was full of the wailing of
whistles, the cries of mechanical animals, and the clamor of childish
comment.
But to Pépin even the dazzling novelty of his surroundings was as
nothing, compared to one object which drew and fixed his attention from
the first instant, as the needle is held rigid by the magnetic pole.
High up upon the tree, clearly outlined against its background of deep
green, and gleaming gorgeously with fresh varnish in the light of the
surrounding candles, hung a violin--not one like Monsieur Pazzini's,
large and of a dull brown, but small--a violin for Pépin himself to
hold, and new, and bright, and beyond all things beautiful and to be
desired!
Then his attention was distracted for a moment. From the time of his
entrance the eyes of Miss Lys had followed the dignified and silent
little Frenchman, and where Miss Lys went Mr. Sedgely followed, so that
now the two were so close that they brushed his elbow, and Pépin,
turning with an instinctive "Pardon," saw that they were watching him
curiously. When, with a feeling of restlessness under their scrutiny, he
looked once more towards the tree, the violin was gone! An instant
later, he saw it in the madly sawing hands of George Hamilton, dancing
like a faun down the room, and he was conscious of a great faintness,
such as he had known but once before,--when he had cut his hand, and the
doctor had sewed it, as Elizabeth sewed rips in cloth.
"He is adorable," said Ethel Lys, "but I have never seen a sadder face.
What eyes!--two brown poems."
"He makes my heart ache," answered Sedgely, slowly, "and yet I could
hardly say why. Ask him what he wants off the tree."
The girl was on her knees by Pépin before the phrase was fairly
finished.
"What didst thou have for Christmas?" she asked, falling unconsciously
into that tender second singular which slips so naturally from the lips
at sight of a French child.
"I?--but nothing," replied the little Vicomte, pleased out of his
anguish by the sound of his own tongue amid the babel of English
phrases.
The girl at his side looked at him with so frank an astonishment that he
felt it necessary to explain.
"I have my gifts on the day of the year. Christmas is an English fête,
and I am French. So I have nothing."
"Nothing!" replied Miss Lys blankly, and then, of a sudden, slipped her
arm around him, and drew his head close to her own.
"What dost thou see on the tree that thou wouldst like to have?" she
asked, eagerly. "What is there, dearest?"
And, at the unwonted tenderness of her question, the floodgates of
Pépin's reserve suddenly gave way. Placing his hands upon the girl's
shoulders, he searched her face with his eyes.
"If there were another violin"--he began, and, faltering, stopped, and
turned away to hide the tears that would come, strive as he might to
hold them back.
"Did you _hear_ him--and _see_ him?" queried Miss Lys, a minute after,
furiously backing Sedgely into a corner by the lapels of his frock coat.
"You _did_--you _know_ you did! And you are still here? Lord! _What_ a
man!"
Sedgely shrugged his shoulders with a pretense of utter bewilderment.
"What must I do?" he inquired, blankly.
"_Do?_" stormed Miss Lys. "_Do?_ Why, scour Paris till you find a violin
precisely like that one George is doing his best to saw in half. Here!
Clément is at the door with the trois-quarts. Tell him to drive you like
mad to the Printemps--to the big place opposite the Grand Hotel--to the
Louvre--to the Bon Marché--anywhere--everywhere! But inside of one hour
I must have that violin!"
When Sedgely returned, thirty minutes later, violin in hand, Ethel met
him at the door.
"They are all at tea," she said. "We'll call Pépin out."
She placed the violin in the hands of the Vicomte without a word, and
without a word Pépin took it from her. The instrument slid to his cheek
as if impelled by its own desire.
"Canst thou play?" she asked him.
"No," said Pépin, "and, besides, it is but a toy. I do not want to hear
it. But I like to feel it--here." And he moved his cheek caressingly
against the cheap varnish.
"Don't you think you might"--began Sedgely, and then found himself on
the other side of the door, and Miss Lys facing him with an air of
hopeless resignation.
"I--act-u-ally--be-lieve," she said, with an effort at calm, "that you
were going to ask him to thank me for it!"
"Why not?" said Sedgely.
"_Lord!_ What a man!" said Miss Lys.
* * * * *
In the dining-room of the de Villersexel apartment the Comte paced
slowly to and fro, with bent head, and fingers that locked and unlocked
behind his back. In the heavy chair before the fire, Pazzini seemed
shrunk to but half his normal size, a mere rack of clothes, two lean
white hands, that gripped the dragons' heads upon the arms of the
fauteuil, and a pale stern face that looked into the smouldering embers,
and beyond--immeasurably beyond.
"How did it happen?" he asked, after a time.
"Shall I ever know?" broke out de Villersexel irritably. "Pépin had been
to a children's party below there on the entresol, at the English
lawyer's. He and his imbecile of a bonne were entering the ascenseur.
She goes from spasm to spasm, so there is no telling. But it seems they
had given Pépin a toy--the English--and she wished to carry it and he
refused. So between them--God knows how!--it slipped from their hands as
the ascenseur cleared the gate--and Pépin stooped to catch it--and fell.
He died at midnight."
There was a long silence, broken only by the snapping of the logs in the
fireplace and the almost inaudible footfalls of the Comte on the thick
carpet. Then--
"He was his mother's son," said Pazzini.
"And mine," replied the other. "The last of the de Villersexel."
He paused abruptly by a little table, and took up a handful of
splintered wood and tangled catgut.
"The toy that killed him," he added in a low voice, and hurled the
fragments over Pazzini's shoulder into the embers. A thin tongue of
flame caught at them as they fell, and broke into a brilliant blaze.
Pazzini leaned forward suddenly and peered at the little conflagration.
"A violin," he said.
"A violin," echoed the Comte. "Think of dying for a violin!"
Pazzini made no reply. His eyes had met those of the portrait over the
chimney--and he was smiling.
[Illustration]
The Tuition of Dodo Chapuis
THE situation was best summed up in the epigram of little Sacha Vitzoff,
the second secretary at the Russian Embassy, who said that there was
room enough in Paris for two and a half millions of people _and_
Gabrielle de Poirier, or for two and a half millions of people _and_
Thaïs de Trémonceau, but that even the place de la Concorde was not
sufficiently wide for Gabrielle and Thaïs to pass without treading on
each others' toes.
It was a rivalry of long standing, nourished by innumerable petty
jealousies and carefully treasured affronts. Gabrielle was tall and
very slender, with a clear, pale complexion, and hair of a curious dark
bronze that in certain lights showed a hint of olive green. So Thaïs
called her the Asparagus Woman--la Femme Asperge. Thaïs was short and
anything but slim, and brown of hair, eyes, and skin. So Gabrielle
called her the Mud-Ball--la Boule de Boue. And neither appellation was
pleasing to the object thereof.
These two great luminaries of the Parisian demi-monde, blazing crimson
with mutual jealousy, followed, for six months of the year, a kind of
right-triangular orbit, comprising the restaurant of Armenonville, the
race-course of Auteuil, and the Café de Paris, and embracing divers
other points of common interest,--the Palais de Glace, of a Sunday
afternoon, the tea-room of the Elysée Palace Hotel, the Folies-Marigny,
the Salon, and the Horse-Show; and, individually, Gabrielle's apartment
on the avenue Kléber, and Thaïs's little hôtel on the rue de la
Faisanderie. Between the last two, as regards situation, cost, and
general equipment, there was not a straw's weight of difference, save in
the estimation of their respective occupants. The apartment had been
rented for a term of years, and furnished and decorated, and supplied
with four servants, by a Russian millionaire, and the same was true of
the hotel in every, save one, detail,--the de Trémonceau's millionaire
was a Brazilian. For the rest, Gabrielle was of a literary bent, and
wrote occasional feuilletons for the Journal, and short stories,
staggering with emotion, for the Gil Blas Illustré: something which, in
the opinion of Thaïs, was stupid and all there was of the most ignoble.
Thaïs herself was a sporadic feature at the Folies-Bergère, where she
sang songs of a melody and a propriety equally doubtful, bunching up her
silk skirts at the end of the refrain, with her side toward the
audience, and winking, with brazen effrontery, at a spot midway between
the heads of the bald gentleman in the third row and the wide-eyed
little St. Cyrien across the aisle. The which Gabrielle found to be the
trade of a camel.
Each had her horses, and her carriage, in which she was whirled three
times up and three times down the allée des Acacias each noon of the
season, and again at five o'clock, and each spent hours daily in the rue
de la Paix, trailing long skirts of tulle and satin before the mirrors
of the men-milliners, and pricing strings of pearls in the private
offices of servile jewelers. Each was deftly veneered, as it were, with
the bearing of the grande dame, except at the moment when she chanced to
pass the other, or refer to her in the course of conversation. Then the
irrepressible past came suddenly to the fore in a word or a gesture,
which babbled of Gabrielle's early experience in the workroom of the
very Paquin she was now patronizing, and of Thaïs's salad days as
assistant to a florist on the grand boulevards.
Honors were even between the two when Dodo Chapuis first came up to pay
homage to the queen capital, of which he had been dreaming for four
years. He was only nineteen, the son of a great manufacturer of Arles,
who had lived severely and frugally, and, dying a widower, left a cool
half million of francs to be divided between Dodo and his sister Louise.
There seems to have been no trace of doubt in the mind of either as to
the respective uses to which their dazzling inheritances should be
applied. Louise promptly accepted a young playwright with a record of
fourteen rejected revues, to whose suit her father had been most
violently opposed; and Dodo, as promptly, took out a letter of credit
for fifty thousand francs and departed for Paris on the morning
following the funeral.
The story of Dodo's first six weeks in the capital is the story of full
a million of his kind. A pocket filled with gold and a mind emptied of
responsibility; youth, health, and craving for the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge,--these foundations given, the aspect of the structure erected
thereupon is inevitable.
Dodo made his début at the Moulin Rouge at eight o'clock on the evening
of his first day in Paris. Despite appearances, this did not mean that
he was wholly a fool. One must remember that it was the evening of the
first day. He walked leagues, it seemed to him, around the crowded
promenade, half stifled by an atmosphere composed of equal parts of
stale beer, cigarette smoke, and cheap perfumery. He watched a quadrille
made up of shrill shrieks, rouge, and an abundance of white lace. He
tossed balls into numbered holes in a long board, and won a variety of
prizes of pseudo-Japanese make, which he immediately presented to the
exponents of the aforesaid quadrille. He squandered a louis in firing a
rifle at paper rabbits passing in monotonous succession over three feet
of sickly green hillside. He bought a citronade for a girl with blue
eyes, and a menthe glaciale for another with brown; and, at the end,
rebuffing the proffered services of a guide, who, by reason of his new
tan overcoat, and to his intense disgust, addressed him in English, he
returned to the Hôtel du Rhin in a state of profound despondency.
But that, as we have said, was on his first evening. On the third, he
had engaged a table in advance at Maxim's, and supped in state on
caviar, langouste à l'Américaine, and Ruinart. _And_ with Antoinette
Féria. It was not much of an achievement, but it showed progress.
On the following day Dodo went to Auteuil, won twelve francs fifty on a
ten-franc bet, and dined at Armenonville. It was here that Suzanne
Derval looked cross-eyed at him, fingered her pearls, and remarked that
he had beaux yeux. Dodo might be said to be fairly launched.
It would be superfluous to note the further stages of his initiation.
They were strictly conventional, and, under the circumstances, it was
remarkable that, at the end of six weeks, he had drawn but seven
thousand francs on his letter of credit, and still retained his
enthusiasms. It is not every one from the provinces for whom Paris
reserves her supreme surprise for the forty-third day.
It chanced to be the first evening of the de Trémonceau's annual
engagement at the Folies-Bergère, and for three days the eloquent legend
"La Belle Thaïs" had been glaring at the boulevard throngs in huge block
letters from the posters on the colonnes Morris. Dodo, meanwhile, had
made many friends among men of tastes similar to his own--a feat which
is curiously easy of accomplishment in Paris, when one has forty-odd
thousand francs and a desire for company. Of these was Sacha Vitzoff,
who, on occasion, had five louis, and invariably spent them at once upon
his friends, before he should be tempted to put them to a worse use.