to _caves_, Jimmy Bulstrode gave in, and accepted the Duc de
Montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the
hotel and turn Parisian." He was in the heart of Paris, yet all around
him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the
house gave in flights of marble steps. When his friend suggested that
Bulstrode turn Parisian, Jimmy laughed. "Do you think," he had asked,
"that a chap born in Providence, educated in Harvard, and, if
cosmopolitan, thoroughly American from start to finish, could, _mon
cher_, turn Parisian?" And the Duc had assured him that he did not
think Bulstrode had a "Latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all
afraid to try his luck at what a French house would do for him! "Why,
your coat alone--the cut of it--" Montensier had laughed, "speaks of
Poole with a Boston compromise!
The Duc had been in the United States--moreover, the Frenchman had
plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to Newport and leave his
house in the care of Jimmy Bulstrode. Whether the Puritan in him led
Bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any
rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love
of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up
and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse.
The Falconers were off somewhere _en auto_. He had thought they had
gone through Spain. It was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and
he did not really know. He wanted very much to be able not to let
himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his
reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they
were going! So he shut himself up with the books which the library
offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his
terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and
main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads
and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the
middle of July.
Directly opposite the white facade of the Montensiers' hotel was a
hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor
professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with
no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who
no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term.
Sometimes Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in
this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that
dislocated fortunes flourished. In one window, pirouetting or dancing
in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a
child--as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years
of age. She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity,
gesticulation, and perpetual motion. When the day was hot she fanned
herself with a bit of paper. She called far out to the wine-merchant's
wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children
played in the gutter.
In Paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves
in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors
altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air. But the De Montensier
garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the
fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by
many suburbs. Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little
suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with
fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his
American master.
One day as the American sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more
disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of Paris
to break his reverie, Prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative
appearance.
"Would m'sieu, _who is so good_, see a young lady?"
His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune
demoiselle," throwing away his cigar.
"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu--" and Prosper stepped
back.
Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him,
and he now saw that part of the _hotel meuble_ had come across the
street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part. Before him
stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in
rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings
evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about
in pattens. She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned
up to keep her from tripping. Her head was adorned by a torn straw
hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity.
"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice. "I have come
to thank monsieur with all my heart."
Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual
had cleverly disappeared.
"To thank me, my child? But for what?"
"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to
send me. I have made the cake. It is beautiful! Monsieur le
cuisinier of this house baked it for me. It is perhaps a little
flat--but that was because I got tired stirring. See--it says--" She
had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her
cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she
laid it on the table, bending over it. "It says stir briskly half an
hour." (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy
hollow.) "Quelle idee! It was _too_ stupid! Half an hour! I just
mixed it round once or twice and then--voila! it has white on the top
and shall have a candle."
"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly. "I'm sure it's a good one."
She nodded brightly. "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to
ask if he would accept a piece of it."
Poor Bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the
horror immediately offered for his degustation. "I don't, my dear,
understand. Why should you thank _me_--what had I to do with it?"
Her gesture was delightful. "But for monsieur it would not exist; for
butter, eggs, and flour. Monsieur Prosper, when he gave them, said it
was of the kindness of '_Monsieur Balstro_.'"
(Oh, Prosper! "I have corrupted _him_," his master thought. "He is as
bad as I am!")
"Well, I'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily. "But what did
you especially want to make it for--with the one candle? That means
one year old. Who's birthday may it then be?"
"It is the birthday of maman." She shut the book, and as she did so
raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil.
There was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that
Bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "Your mother? And what, then,
does your mother do?"
"She's a fish," informed the child tranquilly. And Bulstrode, although
startled, could believe it. It too perfectly accounted for the
cold-blooded indifference to this offspring. Not even a mermaid could
have been guilty of so little care for her child. Still, he repeated:
"A fish?"
"Oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at Bostock's. Oh, que c'est beau!"
she clasped her little hands. "Maman wears a costume of red--quite a
small, thin dress," she described eagerly. "And it is all spangles,
like fire when she dives into the water. I have been; the waiter at
the cafe downstairs took me. I screamed. I thought maman was drowned.
But no--she comes up always!" The child threw her head back and lifted
her eyes in ecstasy. "C'est magnifique!"
"What is your mother's name?"
"Mademoiselle Lascaze."
"And yours?"
"Simone."
"What do you do all day, Simone?"
"I wash and cook and sew and play--I have much to do--oh, much." She
assumed an important air. "The bad air of the room makes maman ill, so
she's out--'to breathe,' she says--and she locks me safely in. I play
Bostock and dive like maman. And sometimes"--she lowered her voice,
and looking back to see if they were alone--confided, "I cry."
"Ah!" sympathized Bulstrode.
"But, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the
night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall,
and I knock back for company."
"I see," he understood gently, "for company."
He rang for Prosper. "You will conduct mademoiselle home, Prosper, and
give her everything she needs for her kitchen always."
"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would----"
At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade
her new friend a cordial good-by.
From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know
concerning the child.
"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur! Four nights of the seven the
poor little object is alone. The mother appears to have money enough,
she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do. She
sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when
she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from
falling off in her sleep."
Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a
lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as
the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be
replaced by any other guardian.
"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her
deviltry, and her child in her care. We are _fin de race_, if you
like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes,
but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however
bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere. You
will find it difficult to replace a mother by a _machine_ or an
_institution_, believe me."
And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in
philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism. What was
he likely to accomplish in the case of this child? Nothing more than
the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure.
"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it,
after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?"
In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help
the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he
came up against a stone wall.
"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I
don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor."
Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided
Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional
maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook
or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more _aqua pura_
than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium.
The gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how
simple it sometimes is to do good. In this case no one had come to him
with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved
thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him.
It was so pleasantly easy to help a child! There were no _arrieres
pensees_--not that they would have troubled him, but there were none;
there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or
criticism, no--he believed--expectations. Everything he could do was
so annoyingly little! The charwoman cleaned, Simone had a complete
wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to
buy. The little thing was so womanly and capable--he had seen it and
marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments--her hands
were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate. She took
her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour
out her gratitude, and Bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these.
Childhood, if it had been for sale on the Boulevard, even that he would
have bought Simone if he could! As it was, he found himself pausing
before a series of shops other than chemisiers--florists, and
jewellers'--shops where diminutive objects were displayed--and one
afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain
window on the Rue de Rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and
familiar voice.
"Jimmy! It isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly
_soon_?"
The gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start. Well, there
were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through
France! She was back and in Paris.
"What--has come so soon?" he asked.
Mrs. Falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by
his side.
"Why, your second childhood, my dear man. Do you know what shop you
are standing before?"
Bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in
it. Behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile
display.
Ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant
parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for
pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on
little white, blue-rimmed platters.
"Have you a moment to spare?" Bulstrode asked her.
"I have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time
hangs heavy on her hands."
"Ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him. "Come,
then, in with me and help me choose a _doll_."
It was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship
which Bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for
some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands. The bachelor and
the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an
unconscionable time. As they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed
various toys on monsieur and madame "_pour les enfants_," and the lady,
finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his
hotel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child
for whom the purchases had been made. On her way up the Champs Elysees
she smiled softly. "It's what you _share_," she mused, "what you give
of _yourself--with_ yourself--_that's_ charity! Jimmy gives himself.
I wonder who his new love is?"
Bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at
first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for Simone. The Rue de Rivoli
doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth
century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and
was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the
drawing-room.
"_Monsieur!_"
"For you, Simone."
"_Monsieur!_"
She said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed
into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet,
hair, dress, incontinently forgot Bulstrode, and quite suddenly,
passionately, caught the image of life to her heart. Just over its
blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the
gentleman's eyes.
"It's my child! I've prayed for it always, always! I've never had a
doll, a _bebe_, m'sieu."
The tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as
Prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden
and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky
spread its expanse over the terrace of the hotel, where, perfectly
happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any
two in Paris that day, the child of the people and an American
gentleman chatted over their tea.
Bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms,
quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if
not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some
colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more
good. In the case of Simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with
abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never
arrive.
But the middle of July did come and with it came poor Jimmy's exquisite
temptation. A telephone helped it dreadfully. There was something so
wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would,
let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over
the wires. And being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good
resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at
Fontainebleau.
Out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her
feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, Mary
Falconer finally asked him, "And your doll, Jimmy? Have you broken her
yet?" Bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of
the little girl, nor did Mrs. Falconer's mention of her bring the
subject near enough for Bulstrode to tell her the pretty story. He had
other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always
did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied. On
this occasion he forgot all about little Simone.
The night of his return Paris was _en fete_ and in no sense impatient
to reach his lonely house--for it seemed to him this night the
loneliest house in the world--he walked without haste up town along the
quays.
It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool
forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys. He had forgotten
that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the
_fete_ would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the
Seine the spirit of the gay populace--good-humor, reckless pleasure,
and the _joie de vivre_--poured itself out around him like cordial,
like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer. In his gray
clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from
the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode
scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor
dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng.
His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of
onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors
and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow
alley. A hurdy-gurdy playing before the _hotel meuble_ tinkled and
jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic
melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode
consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau.
In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child,
hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now
and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a
popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying.
The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously. As she
paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her
excited little face.
[Illustration: In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing]
"I tired! Mon Dieu, que non! I could dance till morning. Play again,
monsieur l'organiste. Play again."
Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his
philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue. As Prosper let his
master in he said:
"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur? The people over there have let her
run quite crazy. The poor little thing! Heaven knows where the mother
is!"
Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts. It was close to
twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on
the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend. Before long
the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of
festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet. From the
distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the
rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the
silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night
advanced.
It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own
personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself,
and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made
him pay up old scores.
On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles
through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had
fled. Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau.
It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and
rose. He had been musing all night in his chair.
A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of
loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh. By the time
the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away,
Bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked
across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the
sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the
window that gave on the street, he looked out. From end to end the
alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman. As he saw in the
ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the
_hotel meuble_--knocking persistently at the door. The tattered gauze
of her dress, whose bold _decolletee_ left her neck and shoulders bare,
a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized
the carnival just come to its end--its exhaustion, its excess, spent at
length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest. Bulstrode,
as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood,
exclaimed to himself with illumination: "Why, she's the _fish_, of
course! Simone's mother! And this is the state in which she goes to
the miserable child!"
As, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments
longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he
slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his
ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the
full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window
of his terrace. Not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of
folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door,
only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone. She had
been let in. With a glance of relief up and down the street where the
_confetti_ in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or
swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, Bulstrode shot
to his door on the Parisian world and after a _nuit blanche_ went
upstairs to his rooms.
And there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing
the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child,
of--he was certain it could be done--buying the mother off. He would,
in short, if he could, legally adopt the Parisian _gamine_ for his own.
It would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of
one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need
of a loving living creature in his environment and would--his thrill at
the idea proved to him how lonely he had been--give him companionship
and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort. He could make a home
at last for a child. Men are more paternal than they are credited with
being, and Bulstrode directly foresaw delightful _causeries_ in the
future with--(he knew many women)--_with one woman_ whose pretty taste,
whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new role. Mrs. Falconer
would dress Simone--her hand should be wonderfully in it all.
Bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme. Certainly, during
the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to
its execution. Nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic
sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the
interweaving of another interest more closely with his life--no idea
that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this
little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port.
He almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's
little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the
most mysterious, illuminated his reverie. Bulstrode, even without the
shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country,
for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir
and holly, and in the centre shone The Tree, whose shiny globes and
marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes.