“THE POISON FLOWER”
It was after this night that Barfleur took his departure for London
for two weeks, where business affairs were calling him during which
time I was to make myself as idle and gay as I might alone or with the
individuals to whom he had introduced me or to whom I had introductions
direct. There was so much that I wished to see and that he did not care
to see over again with me, having seen it all before--the Musée de
Cluny, for instance, the Louvre, the Luxembourg and so on.
The next afternoon after a more or less rambling day I saw him off for
London and then I plunged into this treasure world alone.
One of the things that seriously impressed me was the never-failing
singing air of the city which was everywhere; and another the
peculiarly moody atmosphere of the cemetery of Père-Lachaise--that
wonderful world of celebrated dead--who crowd each other like the
residents of a narrow city and who make a veritable fanfare of names.
What a world! One whole day I idled here over the tombs of Balzac,
Daudet, De Musset, Chopin, Rachel, Abélard and Héloise--a long, long
list of celebrities. My brain fairly reeled with the futility of
life--and finally I came away immensely sad. Another day I visited
Versailles and all its splendor with one of the most interesting and
amusing Americans I met abroad, a publisher by the name of H----,
who regaled me with his own naïve experiences. I fairly choked at
times over his quaint, slangy, amusing comments on things as when at
Versailles, in the chambers of Marie Antoinette, he discovered a small
secret stair only to remark, “There’s where Louis XVI took a sneak
often enough no doubt,” or on one of the towers of Notre Dame when to
a third person who was present he commented, “There’s your gargoyles,
old sox!” Think of the artistic irreverence of it! Concerning a group
of buildings which related to the Beaux-Arts I believe he inquired,
“What’s the bunch of stuff to the right?” and so it went. But the
beauty of Versailles--its stately artificiality!--how it all comes back.
After two weeks in which I enjoyed myself as much as I ever hope to,
studying out the charm and color of Paris for myself, Barfleur returned
fresh, interested, ready for the Riviera, ready for more of Paris,
ready indeed for anything, I said to myself once more, when I saw
him--and I was very glad to see him indeed.
The personality of Barfleur supplies a homey quality of comfortable
companionship. He is so full of a youthful zest to live, and so keen
after the shows and customs of the world. I have never pondered why he
is so popular with women, or that his friends in different walks of
life constitute so great a company. He seems to have known thousands
of all sorts, and to be at home under all conditions. That persistent,
unchanging atmosphere of “All is well with me,” to maintain which is
as much a duty as a tradition with him, makes his presence a constant
delight.
We were soon joined by a small party of friends thereafter: Sir Scorp,
who was bound for an extended stay on the Riviera, a sociologist,
who was abroad on an important scientific investigation, and the
representative of an American publishing house, who was coming to
Paris to waylay Mr. Morgan Shuster, late of Persia, and secure his
book. This goodly company descended upon the Hotel Normandy late one
Friday afternoon; and it was planned that a party of the whole was to
be organized the following night to dine at the Café de Paris and then
to make a round of the lesser known and more picturesque of Parisian
resorts.
Before this grand pilgrimage to the temples of vice and excitement,
however, Barfleur and I spent a remarkable evening wandering from one
restaurant to another in an effort to locate a certain Mlle. Rillette,
a girl who, he had informed me when we first came to Paris, had been
one of the most interesting figures of the Folies stage. Four or five
years before she had held at the Folies-Bergère much the same position
now recently attained by Mistinguett who was just then enthralling
Paris--in other words, she was the sensation of that stormy world of
art and romance of which these restaurants are a part. She was more
than that. She had a wonderful mezzo-soprano voice of great color
and richness and a spirit for dancing that was Greek in its quality.
Barfleur was most anxious that I should get at least a glimpse of this
exceptional Parisian type--the real spirit of this fast world, your
true artistic poison flower, your lovely hooded cobra--before she
should be too old, or too wretched, to be interesting.
We started out to visit G.’s Bar, the Bar Fysher, the Rat Mort,
Palmyr’s Bar, the Grelot, the Rabelais, in fact the whole list of
restaurants and show-places where on occasion she might be expected to
be seen. On the way Barfleur recounted bits of her interesting history,
her marriages, divorces, vices, drug-habits, a strange category of
tendencies that sometimes affect the most vigorous and eager of human
temperaments.
At one café, on this expedition, quite by accident apparently, we
encountered Miss X., whom I had not seen since we left Fishguard, and
who was here in Paris doing her best to outvie the women of the gay
restaurants in the matter of her dresses, her hats, and her beauty. I
must say she presented a ravishing spectacle--quite as wonderful as any
of the other women who were to be seen here; but she lacked, as I was
to note, the natural vivacity of the French. We Americans, in spite of
our high spirits and our healthy enthusiasm for life, are nevertheless
a blend of the English, the German, and some of the sedate nations
of the north; and we are inclined to a physical and mental passivity
which is not common to the Latins. This Miss X., vivid creature that
she was, did not have the spiritual vibration which accompanies the
French women. So far as spirit was concerned, she seemed superior to
most of the foreign types present--but the French women are naturally
gayer, their eyes brighter, their motions lighter. She gave us at once
an account of her adventures since I had seen her--where she had been
living, what places she had visited, and what a good time she was
having. I could not help marveling at the disposition which set above
everything else in the world the privilege of moving in this peculiar
realm which fascinated her so much. From a conventional point of view,
much of what she did was, to say the least of it, unusual, but she
did not trouble about this. As she told me on the _Mauretania_, all
she hoped for was to become a woman of Machiavellian finesse, and to
have some money. If she had money and attained to real social wisdom,
conventional society could go to the devil; for the adventuress,
according to her, was welcome everywhere--that is, anywhere she would
care to go. She did not expect to retain her beauty entirely; but she
did expect to have some money, and meanwhile to live brilliantly as
she deemed that she was now doing. Her love of amusement was quite
as marked as ever, and her comments on the various women of her class
as hard and accurate as they were brilliant. I remember her saying of
one woman, with an easy sweep of her hand, “Like a willow, don’t you
think?”--and of another, “She glows like a ruby.” It was true--fine
character delineation.
At Maxim’s, an hour later, she decided to go home, so we took her to
her hotel and then resumed our pursuit of Mlle. Rillette. After much
wandering we finally came upon her, about four in the morning, in one
of those showy pleasure resorts that I have so frequently described.
“Ah, yes, there she is,” Barfleur exclaimed. I looked to a distant
table to see the figure he indicated--that of a young girl seemingly
not more than twenty-four or twenty-five, a white silk neckerchief tied
about her brown hair, her body clothed in a rather nondescript costume
for a world so showy as this. Most of the women wore evening clothes.
Rillette had on a skirt of light brown wool, a white shirtwaist open
in the front and the collar turned down showing her pretty neck. Her
skirt was short, and I noticed that she had pleasing ankles and pretty
feet and her sleeves were short, showing a solid forearm. Before she
noticed Barfleur we saw her take a slender girl in black for a partner
and dance, with others, in the open space between the tables which
circled the walls. I studied her with interest because of Barfleur’s
description, because of the fact that she had been married twice, and
because the physical and spiritual ruin of a dozen girls was, falsely
or not, laid at her door. Her face did not suggest the depravity which
her career would indicate, although it was by no means ruddy; but
she seemed to scorn rouge. Her eyes--eyes are always significant in
a forceful personage--were large and vague and brown, set beneath a
wide, full forehead--very wonderful eyes. She appeared, in her idle
security and profound nonchalance, like a figure out of the Revolution
or the Commune. She would have been magnificent in a riot--marching
up a Parisian street, her white band about her brown hair, carrying
a knife, a gun, or a flag. She would have had the courage, too; for
it was so plain that life had lost much of its charm and she nearly
all of her caring. She came over when her dance was done, having seen
Barfleur, and extended an indifferent hand. He told me, after their
light conversation in French, that he had chided her to the effect that
her career was ruining her once lovely voice. “I shall find it again at
the next corner,” she said, and walked smartly away.
“Some one should write a novel about a woman like that,” he explained
urgently. “She ought to be painted. It is amazing the sufficiency of
soul that goes with that type. There aren’t many like her. She could
be the sensation again of Paris if she wanted to--would try. But she
won’t. See what she said of her voice just now.” He shook his head.
I smiled approvingly, for obviously the appearance of the woman--her
full, rich eyes--bore him out.
She was a figure of distinction in this restaurant world; for many knew
her and kept track of her. I watched her from time to time talking with
the guests of one table and another, and the chemical content which
made her exceptional was as obvious as though she were a bottle and
bore a label. To this day she stands out in my mind in her simple dress
and indifferent manner as perhaps the one forceful, significant figure
that I saw in all the cafés of Paris or elsewhere.
[Illustration: I looked to a distant table to see the figure he
indicated]
I should like to add here, before I part forever with this curious and
feverish Parisian restaurant world, that my conclusion had been,
after much and careful observation, that it was too utterly feverish,
artificial and exotic not to be dangerous and grimly destructive if
not merely touched upon at long intervals. This world of champagne
drinkers was apparently interested in but two things--the flare and
glow of the restaurants, which were always brightly lighted and packed
with people--and women. In the last analysis women, the young women
of easy virtue, were the glittering attraction; and truly one might
say they were glittering. Fine feathers make fine birds, and nowhere
more so than in Paris. But there were many birds who would have been
fine in much less showy feathers. In many instances they craved and
secured a demure simplicity which was even more destructive than the
flaring costumes of the demi-monde. It was strange to see American
innocence--the products of Petoskey, Michigan, and Hannibal, Missouri,
cheek by jowl with the most daring and the most vicious women which the
great metropolis could produce. I did not know until some time later
how hard some of these women were, how schooled in vice, how weary
of everything save this atmosphere of festivity and the privilege of
wearing beautiful clothes.
Most people come here for a night or two, or a month or two, or once
in a year or so; and then return to the comparatively dull world from
which they emanated--which is fortunate. If they were here a little
while this deceptive world of delight would lose all its glamour; but
a very few days and you see through the dreary mechanism by which it
is produced; the brow-beating of shabby waiters by greedy managers,
the extortionate charges and tricks by which money is lured from the
pockets of the unwary, the wretched hallrooms and garrets from which
some of these butterflies emanate to wing here in seeming delight and
then disappear. It was a scorching world, and it displayed vice as an
upper and a nether millstone between which youth and beauty is ground
or pressed quickly to a worthless mass. I would defy anybody to live
in this atmosphere so long as five years and not exhibit strongly the
tell-tale marks of decay. When the natural glow of youth has gone comes
the powder and paint box for the face, belladonna for the eyes, rouge
for the lips, palms, and the nails, and perfumes and ornament and the
glister of good clothing; but underneath it all one reads the weariness
of the eye, the sickening distaste for bargaining hour by hour and
day by day, the cold mechanism of what was once natural, instinctive
coquetry. You feel constantly that so many of these demi-mondaines
would sell their souls for one last hour of delight and then gladly
take poison, as so many of them do, to end it all. Consumption,
cocaine and opium maintain their persistent toll. This is a furnace of
desire--this Montmartre district--and it burns furiously with a hard,
white-hot flame until there is nothing left save black cinders and
white ashes. Those who can endure its consuming heat are welcome to its
wonders until emotion and feeling and beauty are no more.