THE PROMISE FULFILLED
"It was alcohol! He was right, that old buck. It was alcohol!"
We were sitting in the restaurant of the Hotel Terminus in Marseilles.
Our month-old baby was lying on the cushioned seat between us. The
maître d'hôtel told us she was the youngest lady that had ever come to
his establishment. Bowls of coffee were before us on the table, and we
were enjoying our French breakfast when Herbert burst out with the
remark I have just recorded.
"What is the matter with you?" I asked.
Shaking with laughter, he told me the story.
"You know the basket with breakables in it? And those two champagne
bottles Major Doughty-Wylie gave us?"
"One of them had boracic acid in it. Well?"
"Yes, yes, that is just it. The customshouse officer spied the bottles
and it did not take him long to uncork one and smell it. He wanted to
stick me for duty."
"What did you do?"
"Protested against paying duty on boracic acid solution. I pointed you
out to him sitting over there with the baby. He yielded
finally--observing that Americans are queer, tough customers, and that
their babies must be husky if their eyes can stand such stuff. But he
got the wrong bottle. Don't you remember that in the second one is pure
grape alcohol, and that is what he sniffed."
Traveling with a baby, when tickets do not allow one to take the
_rapide_ sleeping-cars, has its good points. People do not care to spend
the night in a compartment with a baby. We got to the train early--very
early. We put Christine's wicker basket (her bed) by the door, and found
it to be the best kind of a "reserved" sign. Half a hundred travelers
poked their heads in--and passed on. The sight of Christine acted like
magic to our advantage. The baby started to cry. "Don't feed her yet,"
ordered her dad. "Until this train starts, the louder she cries the
better for her later comfort." As the wheels began to move, a man came
in, put his bag on the rack and sat down. Laughing, he closed the door
and pulled down the curtain.
"I have been watching you," said he. "Yours is a clever game. I have
three little cabbages myself, and I know babies don't disturb people as
much as those who have none think. No," he added, "I must correct
myself, thinking of my mother and my mother-in-law. Even those who have
had many babies forget in the course of time how they were once used to
them. We'll have a comfortable night. Have a cigar, monsieur!"
We did have a splendid sleep. Christine has always been one of those
wonder babies. So we were ready to see Paris cheerfully. Heaven knows we
needed every possible help to being cheerful! For we were embarked upon
a venture that looked more serious than it had the year before. A pair
of youngsters can knock around happily without worrying about
uncertainties. A baby means a home--and certain unavoidable expenses.
Where your progeny is concerned, you can't just do without. We had two
hundred and fifty francs in cash, and the prospect of a six hundred
dollar fellowship, payable in quarterly installments. That was all we
could count upon. Our only other asset was some correspondence sent to
the _New York Herald_ that had not been ordered, but for which we hoped
to be paid.
The Marseilles express used to arrive at Paris at an outlandish hour. It
was not yet six when we were ready to leave the Gare de Lyon. Two
porters, laden down with hand-luggage, asked where we wanted to go. We
did not know. The Paris hotels that had been our habitats in days past
were no longer possible, even temporarily. There was no mother to foot
my bills, and Herbert wasn't a bachelor with only his own room and food
to pay for. I suggested the possibility of a small hotel by the station.
The porters took us out on the Boulevard Diderot. Across the street was
a hotel (whose gilt letters, however, did not omit the invariable
adjective "grand") that looked within our means.
Once settled and breakfasted, the family council tackled the first
problem--Scrappie, gurgling on the big bed. Ever since she was born we
had been traveling, and she naturally had to be with us all the time.
Only now, after five weeks of parenthood, did the novel and amazing fact
dawn upon us that no longer could we "just go out." Scrappie was to be
considered. Without Scrappie, we could have set forth immediately upon
our search for a place to live. With Scrappie--?
There always is a _deus ex machina_. In our case it was a _dea_. Marie
still lived in Paris. The contact had never been lost, and when we went
through Paris on our honeymoon the year before, I had taken my husband
to show him off to Marie. It was decided that I should go out
immediately and find her. A month before we had written that we were
coming to Paris in June, and she would be expecting us. Marie, and Marie
alone, meant freedom of movement. I could not think of trusting my baby
to anyone else.
The address was at the tip of my tongue--22 Rue de Wattignies. A few
people know vaguely of the battle, but how many life-long Parisians know
the street? Not the _boulevardiers_ or the _faubouriens_ of
Saint-Germain, or the Americans, North and South, of the Etoile Quarter.
And yet the Rue de Wattignies is an artery of importance, copiously
inhabited. We had gone in a cab last year, and remembered that it was
somewhere beyond the Bastille. At the corner of the street beyond our
hotel, just opposite the great clock tower of the Gare de Lyon, I saw
the Bastille column not far away. Why waste money on cabs? To the right
of the Bastille lay the Rue de Wattignies, and not very far to the
right. I remembered perfectly, and started out unhesitatingly.
Oh, the Paris vistas! No other city in the world has every hill top,
every great open space, marked by a building or monument that beckons to
you at the end of boulevard or avenue. No other city in the world has
familiar dome or tower or steeple popping up over housetops in the
distance to reassure you wherever you may have wandered, that you are
not far from, and that you can always find your way to, a familiar spot.
The Eiffel Tower, the Great Wheel, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré Coeur, the
Panthéon, Val-de-Grâce, the Invalides, the Tour St. Jacques, give you
your direction. But when you dip into Paris streets, on your way to the
goal, you are lost. Even constant reference to a map and long experience
do not save you from the deceptive encouragement of Paris vistas. You
can walk in circles almost interminably.
I had done this so often in the old days when I escaped from my
governess. I did so again when I tried to find the Rue de Wattignies.
Perhaps I did not try very hard: for one never minds wandering in
Paris. The life of the streets is a witchery that makes one forgot time
and distance and goal. When I lost sight of the Bastille column, the
labyrinth of St. Antoine streets led me on until I had crossed the canal
and found myself by the Hôpital St. Louis. After the year in the East,
and years before that in America, old houses and street markets held me
in a new world. It was a glorious June day to boot, and after steamer
and train, walking was a keen pleasure. Marital and parental
responsibilities were forgotten. The Hôpital St. Louis brought me back
to the realities of life. I knew that it was north of the Bastille, and
not in the direction of the Rue de Wattignies. Suddenly there came
uneasily into my mind the picture of a husband, a prisoner, patiently
waiting in a very small room in a very small hotel, and a baby demanding
lunch. Conscience insisted upon a cab: for nearly two hours had passed
since I started forth to find Marie. I had left the hotel early enough
to catch her before she might have gone out. What if Marie should not be
at home? "Hurry, _cocher_!"
My panic was unjustified. Marie was at home. Delighted to hear of our
arrival, and eager to see her petite Hélène's baby, she put on her funny
little black hat, and went right down to the waiting cab.
When we got to the hotel, Herbert was eating a second mid-morning petit
déjeuner. He had a copy of the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_,
and showed me, well played up in a prominent place, the last of the
Adana massacre stories he had forwarded by mail from Turkey. This was
the first time he realized that his "stuff" had been exclusive. There
was a pleasant prospect of drawing a little money. So my long absence
brought forth no remark, specially as Scrappie had slept like an angel.
"We played a wise game," said Herbert, "when we sent the stories
smuggled through Cyprus to the _Herald_. We shall not have to correspond
with New York on a slim chance of a newspaper's gratitude. We can get at
James Gordon Bennet right here in Paris." Then he showed me some
advertisements picked out in the column of _pensions_ as promising and
within our means. We had decided to consider nothing outside of the
Latin Quarter.
Marie had not changed a bit. She could not say the same for me although
she fussed over me as if I were five going on six. She forgot that
twenty years had gone since the last time she combed my hair. She
communicated to me the old sense of security. She bathed the baby. She
brought me food and sat beside me, observing that long ago she had to
coax me to take one more mouthful to please her.
"You always were fussy about your food. Ma chère petite Hélène, you
don't eat enough to keep a sparrow alive. You are a naughty one."
She insisted upon my drinking a cup of camomile tea, and took me
straight back to my sixth year by calling it _pipi du chat_. Knowing
that name for camomile tea is one of the tests of whether one really
knows French.
"Marie," I begged, "show me how English people speak French--the way you
used to do!"
But Herbert, who had gone out to get the _Daily Mail_ for its _pension_
list, was coming in the door, and Marie would not show off before
Monsieur. Never did she call me _chère petite Hélène_ when he or any
other person was present. It was always Madame before company. The
_Mail_ had many advertisements of _pensions_ in streets near the
Luxembourg. Marie helped us pick them out. The Luxembourg Garden was an
integral part of the Latin Quarter, and we had to think of Scrappie's
outing.
After lunch we turned Christine over thankfully to Marie and went out
_pension_-hunting together.
"You were lucky in finding Marie," was all Herbert said.
"Yes," I answered, "I really couldn't have left the baby with anyone
else."
"But is Marie the only person in the world? Without her, would you be a
slave for ever and ever? There must be plenty of people that we could
get to look after Scrappie."
"You don't know what it means to have a child!" said Scrappie's mother.
"I guess I look pretty healthy for a fellow who has just landed in Paris
with a wife and a baby and 250 francs!" said my husband.
"Can't make us mad," said I; "we're in Paris."
You pile up on one side of the scale heaps of things that ought to worry
you, but if you put on the other side the fact that you are in Paris,
down goes the Paris side with a sure and cheerful bang, up goes the
other side, and the worries tumble off every which way into nowhere.
The main threads of the world's spider web start very far from Paris in
all directions and the heaviest urge of traffic is towards the centre.
Paris was the centre of the spider web long before Peace Delegates came
here to discover the fact. Students, diplomats, travel-agencies,
theatrical troupes knew it and whole shelves of books have been written,
down the years, to prove it. If Paris is your birth-place, you learn
that you are in the capital of the world long before you know how to
read the books. If you are an expert on ancient coins, if you are a
wood-carver, if you are a singer wanting a voice that will make your
fortune because it was trained in France, if you are a baker, if you are
a burglar, if you are a silk merchant, if you are a professor from
Aberdeen hunting for manuscripts that will prove your thesis concerning
Pelagius, if you are an _apache_, if you are an English
nursemaid,--you'll never be lonely in Paris. No matter how isolated or
queer or misunderstood you were where you came from, in Paris you'll
find inspiration, competition, companionship, opportunity and pals. The
papers tell us every week that the birth rate is going down. But the
population of Paris is increasing. So in peace, in war and in peace
again, there was one constant quantity underpinning existence--Paris,
the centre of the spider web. The spider that lures is liberty to work
out one's ideas in one's own way in a friendly country. It is a wonder
the men who make maps in France can draw lines latitudinally and
longitudinally. What difference did it make then if we had only two
hundred and fifty francs?