Three hours later the passengers of the _Toulouse_ were aboard a special
train for Paris, and in a first-class compartment Brainard was seated,
facing his valise, and looking out upon the pleasant landscape of the
Loire valley, a contented expression on his brown young face.
He had already formulated to himself the exact plot of his movements from
the moment he reached Paris. From the pleasant Frenchwoman who had been
his neighbor at the ship’s table he had learned the address of a little
hotel in the Bourse quarter, where she assured him that Americans rarely
appeared. It was not far from the large bank in which he intended to
deposit Melody’s burdensome fortune until he could make arrangements for
disposing of it.
It did not take him long, therefore, to install himself at the little
Hôtel des Voyageurs et Brésil, and to rid himself of his troublesome
loot. Then he wrote a letter to Schneider Brothers, of Berlin, who, he
had learned at the Crédit Lyonnais, were a well-known firm of bankers
with an agency in New York. He wrote the Messrs. Schneider that in
obedience to the instructions of the late Mr. Herbert Krutzmacht, of San
Francisco, he wished to consult with them in regard to the disposal of
some securities that he had in his possession. He would remain for the
present in Paris, and he begged to suggest that the bankers should send a
responsible agent to meet him at some place—preferably The Hague, whither
he was going the following week.
He had selected The Hague as a safe middle ground, after consulting the
map of Europe in his guidebook.
“That will draw their fire,” he thought complacently. “We shall see on
which side of the game they are!”
Having mailed the letter, he strolled out to the boulevards to enjoy his
first whiff of Paris. This was the city that he had walked in his
dreams! He had never hoped to see it; but now he was strolling along the
Boulevard des Italiens, and there before his eyes lay the great Place de
l’Opéra, with its maze of automobiles, ’buses, and pedestrians. And
there—Brainard stopped in the middle of the crowded _place_, wrapped in
wonder, staring at the gilded figures on the façade of the Opéra, until
an excitable official with a white baton poured a stream of voluble
expostulation into his ear, and he dodged from under an omnibus just in
time to fall into the path of a motor, causing general execration.
The official with the white stick finally landed him on the curb before
he became an obstruction to traffic. He sank into an inviting iron chair
and ordered a drink, as he saw that that was what the Parisians used
their sidewalks for. In answer to his labored French, there came back in
the purest Irish:
“Whisky, sor? Black and White, sor? Very good, sor!”
“Well, I never!” he murmured, radiant with happiness.
When the waiter reappeared with the drink, he was gazing down the broad
avenue, entranced.
“Where does that go?” he whispered to the waiter, thrusting a bill into
the curving palm and pointing vaguely before him.
“The Luver, sure, sor. You’ll be wanting a nurse before the day is
done!” the Irishman muttered.
And indeed the self-contained young American began to act like a lunatic
let loose. Gulping down his whisky, he set off at random, plunging again
into the sea of traffic, finally escaping to the shelter of a cab. The
driver, after vain attempts to extract an intelligible order from his
fare, just drove on and on through the boulevards, across great squares,
up the noble avenue to the lofty arch, and then came back to the center
of the city and stopped suggestively before a restaurant.
Somehow Brainard managed to get fed, and then the fatherly cabby received
him and bore him on through the gas-lighted streets, soft and lambent and
vocal, and at the end of another hour deposited him in front of what
Brainard took to be a theater—a modest-looking building enough. From the
poster he saw that it was the Français.
The great Théâtre Français! He beamed back at cabby, who gesticulated
with his whip and urged him on. Cabby had begun sympathetically to
comprehend his lunatic.
They played _Cyrano_ that night, it happened. Though the fluent lines
rolled too swiftly over Brainard’s head for his feeble comprehension of
the language, he understood the wonderful actors. For the first time in
the twenty-eight years of his existence, he realized what is art—what it
is to conceive and represent life with living creatures, to clothe dull
lines of print with human passions. This was what he had dreamed might
be when he descended from his gallery seat in a Broadway theater—but what
never was.
Cabby was asleep on the box outside when Brainard emerged from his dream.
At the young American’s touch, he awoke, and, chirping to his decrepit
horse, bore the stranger to his hotel. At the door they exchanged vivid
protestations of regard, and a couple of pieces of gold rolled into
cabby’s paw.
“He understood!” Brainard murmured gratefully. “_Demain_—_demain_!” he
cried; and the _cocher_ cracked his whip.
The next two days were the most wonderful that Brainard had ever spent.
He slept but a few hours each night—was there not all the rest of life to
sleep in? Under the fat cabby’s guidance he roamed day and night. He
would murmur from time to time some famous name which seemed to act on
cabby like a cabalistic charm,—Louvre, Panthéon, Arc de Triomphe,
Invalides, Bastille, Luxembourg, Nôtre Dame. At noon and at night they
drew up before some marvelous restaurant where the most alluring viands
were to be had. Each evening there was a theater, carefully chosen by
cabby; and there Brainard spent enchanted hours, drinking in at every
sense the meaning of the play, savoring the charm of intonation, of line,
of gesture—the art which seemed innate in these people.
For was he not, as he had said to Krutzmacht, by profession a dramatist?
The third day he bethought him of the French lady of the _Toulouse_, and
gave her address to his guardian. With her he made an expedition to
Versailles. On their return from the château, they dined at a little
restaurant at Ville d’Avray, the Frenchwoman carefully ordering the food
and the wine.
As the twilight fell across the old ponds and over the woods where Corot
had once wandered, Brainard murmured softly:
“Melody, my dear, I owe you a whole lot for this—more than I can ever pay
you, no matter how much I can squeeze out of those Dutchmen for your
bonds and stock!” And then, aloud, “Here’s to Melody—God bless her!”
“Mel-odie!” said the French lady daintily. “It is a pretty name. Is
that the name of your _fiancée_?”
“No, madam! I have never seen the lady—but I hope to, some day!”
The Frenchwoman smiled and made no comment, puzzled by this latest
manifestation of the lunatic American.
After dinner they strolled through the ancient park of St. Cloud to the
river, and took a _bateau mouche_ for Paris. Mme. Vernon seemed to
understand all the pleasant little ways of enjoying life. It was a warm,
starry night. The French lady sat close to Brainard, and looked up
tenderly into his eyes, but though his lips were wreathed in smiles, and
his eyes were bright, he did not seem to comprehend what such
opportunities were made for.
“Not even took my hand once!” she murmured to herself with a sigh, as she
mounted the stairs to her apartment alone. “What are these Americans
made of? To drink to the name of an unknown, and spend their dollars
like sous. And always business!”
For when she had suggested an excursion for the morrow, the young man had
excused himself on the plea of “my business.”
“Always business!” she murmured.
But the lady did Brainard an injustice. He was thinking little of
business. If she had but known it, he was in love, and dreaming—in love
with life, and dreaming of the wonderful mystery of Krutzmacht and of the
still more mysterious Melody!
* * * * *
At his hotel there was a dispatch from the Schneider Brothers, appointing
a meeting at a hotel in The Hague for the following evening.