We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the
French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in
cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the
feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain
of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water
in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded
the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it.
He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in
sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man
must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his
undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his
breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler
had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing,
and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria
at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with
Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother
came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris,
though common enough, I dare say, in paradise.
They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz
celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real
bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct,
courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the
gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag,
as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up
in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his
mother took a "little turn" and then came back to fetch him; a stout man
in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands
heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a "genius
at the shoot was the little mister," and had averaged upon the "mister
of iron" one "fatal blow" in every five. Madame "invited" the stout man
to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and
bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out
upon the "sacred name of a rooster." And everybody laughed, including
Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack
it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun.
But the next event upon the programme was less provocative of pure joy
in the heart of Fitz.
"You don't remember the Burtons, do you, Fitz?" asked his mother.
"No," said he.
"Well," she said, "Mrs. Burton was a school-mate of mine, Elizabeth
Proctor, and I've just learned that she is at the d'Orient with her
daughter. The father died, you know--"
"I know _now_" interrupted Fitz with a grin.
He liked to correct his mother's English habit of "you-knowing" people
who didn't know.
"And I really think I must call and try to do something for them."
"The d'Orient," said Fitz, "is where they have the elevator that you
work yourself. Billy Molineux and I got caught in it between the third
and fourth floors."
"Well," said his mother, "would you mind very much if we drove to the
d'Orient now and called on the Burtons?"
Fitz said that he would mind _very_ much, but as he made no more
reasonable objection Mrs. Williams gave the order to Cunningham, and not
long after they stopped before the d'Orient in the Rue Daunou, and
Fontenoy flashed in with Mrs. and Master Williams's cards, and came out
after an interval and stationed himself stiffly near the step of the
victoria. This meant that Mrs. Burton was at home, as we say, or, "at
herself," as the French have it. If he had leaped nimbly to his seat
beside Cunningham on the box it would have meant that Mrs. Burton was
not "at herself."
So once more Mrs. Williams became a lovely, trailing figure out of the
seventh heaven, and Fitz, stoical but bored, followed her into the
court-yard of the hotel. Here were little iron tables and chairs, four
symmetrical flower-beds containing white gravel, four palm-trees in
tubs, their leaves much speckled with coal smuts; a French family at
breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in
a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the
puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and
black, swinging free, and across her lap a copy of a fashion paper.
On perceiving Mrs. Williams the child at once came forward, and dropped
the most charming little courtesy imaginable.
"How do you do?" she said. "Poor, dear mamma isn't a bit well. But I
said that she would see you, Mrs. Williams. She said yesterday that she
wanted so much to see you."
In the event Mrs. Williams went up three flights in the elevator that
you worked yourself; only on this occasion the proprietor, hastily
slipping into his frock-coat and high hat (you could see him at it
through the office window), worked it for her. And Fitz remained with
the gloomy prospect of being entertained by little Miss Burton.
She was younger than Fitz by two years and older by ten--a serene,
knowing, beautiful child. When Fitz proposed that they sit in the
victoria, as softer than the iron chairs, she called him a funny boy,
but she assented. And as they went she tossed aside her fashion paper,
remarking, "_You_ wouldn't care for that."
When they had settled down into the soft, leather cushions of the
victoria she sighed luxuriously and said:
"This _is_ nice! I wish--" and broke off short.
"What?" asked Fitz.
"Oh," she said, "that the horses would start, and take us all over Paris
and back, and everybody would see us go by, and envy us. But mamma and
I," she said, "are devoted to fiacres--not smart, are they?"
"I don't mind," said Fitz, "if they go where I tell 'em to, and don't
set up a row over the _pourboire_."
"Still," said she, "it must be nice to have carriages and things. We
used to have. Only I can hardly remember. Mamma says I have a dreadfully
short memory."
"How long have you been abroad?" Fitz asked.
"Dear me," she said, "ever so long. I don't remember."
"Won't it be fun," said Fitz, "to go home?"
"America?" She hesitated. "Mamma says it's all so crude and rude. I
forget."
"Don't you remember America!" exclaimed Fitz, much horrified.
"Not clearly," she admitted.
"I guess you never saw Cleveland, Ohio, then," said Fitz, "'n' Euclid
Avenue, 'n' Wade Park, 'n' the cannons in the square, 'n' the
breakwater, 'n' never eat Silverthorn's potatoes at Rocky River, 'n'
never went to a picnic at Tinker's Creek, 'n' never saw Little Mountain
'n' the viaduct."
"You are quite right," said little Miss Burton, "I never did."
"When I grow up," said Fitz in a glow of enthusiasm, "I'm going to live
in America 'n' have a tower on my house with a flagpole, 'n' a cannon to
let off every sunset and sunrise."
"I shouldn't like that," said she, "if I were sleeping in the house at
the time."
"I shouldn't be sleeping," said Fitz; "I'd be up early every morning to
let the cannon off."
"I remember Newport a little," she said. "I'd live there if I were you.
Newport is very smart for America, mamma says. We're going to Newport
when I grow up. I'm sure it will be nicer if you are there."
Fitz thought this very likely, but was too modest to say so.
"If I ever go to Newport," he said, "it will be as captain of a cup
defender."
"I heard your mother call you Fitz," said little Miss Burton. "Is that
your name, or do you have them?"
"F-i-t-z-h-u-g-h," said Fitz, "is my name."
"Any middle name?"
"No."
"That's smarter," said she. "I haven't either."
"What _is_ your name?" asked Fitz, trying to feign interest.
"Evelyn," said she, "but my intimate friends call me Eve."
"Huh!" said Fitz grossly, "Eve ate the apple first."
"Yes," sighed Eve, "and gave Adam the core. Nowadays, I heard mamma say
to Count Grassi, it's the other way 'round."
"My father says," said Fitz, "that Eve ought to of been spanked."
Certain memories reddened Eve; but the natural curiosity to compare
experiences got the better of her maiden reticence upon so delicate a
subject. She lowered her voice.
"Do you yell?" she asked. "I do. It frightens them if you yell."
"I was never spanked" said Fitz. "When I'm naughty mamma writes to papa,
and he writes to me, and says he's sorry to hear that I haven't yet
learned to be a gentleman, and a man of the world, and an American.
That's worse than being spanked."
"Oh, dear!" said Eve, "I don't mind what people say; that's just water
on a duck's back; but what they do is with slippers--"
"And," cried Fitz, elated with his own humor, "it isn't on the
duck's--back."
"Are you yourself to-day," asked Miss Eve, her eyes filling, "or are you
just unusually horrid?"
"Here--I say--don't blub," said Fitz, in real alarm. And, knowing the
power of money to soothe, he pulled a twenty-franc gold piece from his
pocket and himself opened and closed one of her tiny hands upon it.
The child's easy tears dried at once.
"Really--truly?--ought I?" she exclaimed.
"You bet!" said Fitz, all his beautiful foreign culture to the fore.
"You just keep that and surprise yourself with a present next time you
want one."
"Maybe mamma won't like me to," she doubted. And then, with devilish
wisdom, "I think mamma will scold me first--and let me forget to give it
back afterward. Thank you, Fitz. I could kiss you!"
"Fire away," said Fitz sullenly. He was used to little girls, and liked
to kiss them, but he did not like them to kiss him. She didn't, however.
She caught his hand with the one of hers that was not clutching the gold
piece, and squeezed it quickly and let it go. Something in this must
have touched and made appeal to the manly heart. For Fitz said, averting
his beautiful eyes:
"You're a funny little pill, aren't you?"
The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a
jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame
was coming.
"Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn,
and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz.
They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a
gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to
the famous elevator.
"Your mother's smart," said Eve.
"Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?"
"When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other
things, I dare say."
"Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?"
"Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand.
They shook, she firmly, he with the flabby, diffident clasp of childhood
and old age.
"You're a funny kid," said Fitz.
"You're rather a dear," said Eve.
She entered the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared upward, at
the pace of a very footsore and weary snail.
Mrs. Burton was much cheered by Mrs. Williams's visit, as who that
struggles is not by the notice of the rich and the mighty?
"My dear," she said, when Eve entered, "she is so charming, so natural;
she has promised to give a tea for me, and to present me to some of her
friends. I hope you like the boy--Fitz--Fritz--whatever his name is. It
would be so nice if you were to be friends."
"He _is_ nice," said Eve, "ever so nice--but _so_ dull."
"What did you talk about?" asked Mrs. Burton,
"Really," said Eve, aged seven, "I forget."