NEW FRIENDS AND OLD.
In ordinary, Mrs. Carnby was one of the rare mortals who succeed in
disposing as well as in proposing, but there were times when there was
not even a family resemblance between her plans and her performances.
She had fully intended that young Vane should be the only guest at her
Sunday breakfast, but as she came out of church that morning into the
brilliant sunlight of the Avenue de l'Alma, she found herself face to
face with the Ratchetts, newly returned from Monte Carlo, and promptly
bundled the pair of them into her victoria. Furthermore, as the carriage
swung round the Arc, and into the Avenue du Bois, she suddenly espied
Mr. Thomas Radwalader, lounging, with an air of infinite boredom, down
the _plage_.
"There's that Radwalader, thinking about himself again!" she exclaimed,
digging her coachman in the small of his ample back with the point of
her tulle parasol. "Positively, it would be cruelty to animals not to
rescue him. _Arretez_, Benoit!"
Radwalader came up languidly as the carriage stopped.
"Where are you going?" demanded Mrs. Carnby, after greetings had been
exchanged.
"Home," answered Radwalader. "I met Madame Palffy back there a bit, and
couldn't get away for ten minutes. You know, it's shocking on the
nerves, that kind of thing, so I thought I'd drop in at my quarters for
a pick-me-up."
"Well, if I'm not a pick-you-up, I'm sure I don't know what is," said
Mrs. Carnby. "You're to come to breakfast. You'll have to walk, though.
We're three already, you see, and I don't want people to take my
carriage for a _panier a salade_. I hadn't the most remote intention of
asking you; but when a man tells me he's been talking for ten minutes to
that Palffy, I always take him in and give him a good square meal."
"You're very kind," said Radwalader. "Are you going to play bridge
afterwards? If so, I must go home for more money."
"Nothing of the sort!" said Mrs. Carnby emphatically. "There's a
_protege_ of Jeremy's coming to breakfast--a Bostonian, twenty years
young, and over here for his health. You must all go, directly after
coffee. I'm going to spend the afternoon feeding him with sweet spirits
of nitre out of a spoon, and teaching him his catechism. Perhaps you'd
like to stay and learn yours?"
"I think I know it," laughed Radwalader.
"If you do, it's one of your own fabrication, then--with just a single
question and answer. 'What is my duty toward myself? My duty toward
myself is, under all circumstances, to do exactly as I dee please.'"
"If that were the case, my good woman, I should live up to my profession
of faith, not only by accepting your invitation, as I mean to do, but by
staying the entire afternoon."
"That's very nicely said indeed," answered Mrs. Carnby. "_Allez_,
Benoit!"
Twenty minutes later the whole party were assembled in her _salon_.
Carnby, caught by his wife as he was scuttling into his study, was now
doing his visibly inadequate best to entertain Philip Ratchett, who
stood gloomily before him, with his legs far apart, his hands in his
pockets, and his eyes on the top button of his host's waistcoat. He was
a typical Englishman, of the variety which leans against door-jambs in
the pages of _Punch_, and makes unfortunate remarks beginning with "I
say--" about the relatives of the stranger addressed. Society bored him
to the verge of extinction, but it is only fair to say that he repaid
the debt with interest. He was tolerated--as many a man before and after
him has been--for the sake of his wife.
Mrs. Ratchett patronized, with equal ardour, a sewing-class which
fabricated unmentionable garments of red flannel for supposedly grateful
heathen, and a society for psychical research which boasted of
liberal-mindedness because it was willing to admit that, at the dawn of
the twentieth century, the causes of certain natural phenomena yet
remained unexplained. Her entire conception of life underwent a radical
change whenever she read a new book, which she did at fortnightly
intervals. She was thirty, clever, and frankly beautiful, hence a factor
in the Colony.
The fifth member of the company in Mrs. Carnby's _salon_, Mr. Thomas
Radwalader, enjoyed the truly Parisian distinction of being an
impecunious bachelor who did not accept all the invitations he received.
He might have been thirty-five or forty-five or fifty-five. His
smooth-shaven, impassive face offered no indication whatever of his age.
He was already quite gray, but, in contrast to this, his speech was
tinged with a frivolity, rather pleasant than otherwise, which hinted at
youth. Mrs. Carnby had once described him as being "dappled with
knowledge," and this, in common with the majority of Mrs. Carnby's
estimates, came admirably near to being exact. Radwalader's actual fund
of information was far less ample than was indicated by the facility
with which he talked on any and every subject, but he was master of the
science of selection. He judged others--and rightly--by himself, and
went upon the often-proven theory that a polished brilliant attracts
more attention than an uncut Koh-i-nur. He made the superficial things
of life his own, and on the rare occasions when the trend of
conversation led him out of his depth, he caught at the life-belt of
epigram, and had found his feet again before men better informed had
finished floundering. He lived in a tiny apartment, on the safe side of
nothing a year, and kept up appearances with a skill that was little
short of genius. Gossip passed him by, a circumstance for which he was
devoutly grateful, though it was due less to chance than to management.
Such was the company into which Mr. Andrew Sterling had despatched his
grandson--in hopes that the change might be of benefit. As he came
through the _portieres_, young Vane proved to tally, in the main
essentials of appearance, with Mrs. Carnby's prophetic estimate. He was
somewhat more than rather good-looking, and essentially American, with
the soap-and-cold-water suggestion strongly to the fore. Mrs. Carnby
always noted three things about a man before she spoke to him--his
hands, his linen, and his eyes. In the first two Andrew Vane qualified
immediately; in the third his hostess was forced to confess herself at a
loss. In singular contrast to a complexion dark almost to swarthiness,
his eyes were large and of an intense steel-blue. He met those of
another squarely, not alone with the frankness characteristic of youth,
but with the strange calm of confidence typical of men accustomed to the
command of a battle-ship or an army corps. Mrs. Carnby, in ordinary the
most self-possessed of women, gave, almost guiltily, before the keen,
clear eyes of Andrew Vane.
"He has no business whatever to have eyes like that, at his age," she
told herself, almost angrily. "They ought to _grow_ in a man's head,
after he has seen everything there is to be seen."
The thought was involuntary, but it recalled to her memory where she had
seen their like before.
"Radwalader has them," she added mentally. "_Good_ Lord! _Radwalader_!
And this child hasn't even graduated!"
During the brief interval between the general introduction and the
announcement of breakfast, she studied her new guest with unwonted
interest. He was of the satisfactory medium height at which a man is
neither contemptible nor clumsy, slight in build, but straight as an
arrow, with narrow hips and a square backward fling of shoulder which
spoke of resolution.
"He has 'No Compromise' written all over his back," said Mrs. Carnby to
herself. "I should believe everything he told me, and not be afraid of
what I told him."
Then she noted that he was eminently at ease. There is something out of
the common about twenty that keeps its hands hanging at its sides, and
its feet firmly planted, without suggesting a tailor's dummy. Andrew was
talking to Mr. Carnby about his grandfather and Boston, and from the
first to the last word of the short colloquy he did not once shift his
position. As he stood thus, in some curious fashion consideration of his
years was completely eliminated from one's thought of him. He was
deferential, but in the negative manner of guest to host, rather than in
the positive of youth to age; and, at the same time, he was assertive,
but with the force of personality, not the conspicuity of awkwardness.
He fitted into his surroundings instantly, like a wisely placed
_bibelot_, but he dominated them as well.
"That Palffy," was Mrs. Carnby's final resolve, "shall get him only over
my dead body."
And so, unconsciously, Andrew scored his first Parisian triumph.
For the first ten minutes of breakfast, Mrs. Carnby, at whose left he
sat, let him designedly alone. It was her belief that men, like
saddle-horses, should be given their heads in strange territory, and
left to find themselves--this in contrast to the policy of her social
rival, Madame Palffy, who boasted of being able to draw out the best
there was in a new acquaintance in the first quarter-hour of
conversation. In this she was probably correct, though in a sense which
she did not perceive--for few good qualities survived the strain of that
initial quarter-hour.
But if Mrs. Carnby's attention appeared to be engrossed by Radwalader on
her right, and Mrs. Ratchett beyond Radwalader, she kept, nevertheless,
a weather eye on Andrew; and when, presently, his spoon tinkled on his
_bouillon_ saucer, she turned to him.
"I've been watching you," she began, "to see how you would take to
French oysters. It's a test I always apply to newcomers from America.
If they eat only one _Marennes verte_, I know at once that they approve
of forty-story buildings, and are going to talk about 'getting back to
God's country'; if they eat all six, I know I may venture to hint that
there are advantages about living in Paris, without having my head
bitten off for being an expatriate."
"It would seem your head is quite safe, so far as I am concerned,"
laughed Andrew, "for I finished off my half-dozen, and thought them very
good."
"Then you have the soul of a Parisian in the body of a Bostonian,"
affirmed Mrs. Carnby. "A liking for _Marennes vertes_ is a survival of a
previous state of existence. Here's Mr. Radwalader, for instance, who
can't abide them, even after Heaven knows _how_ many years in Paris."
"They taste so much like two-sou pieces that, whenever I eat them, they
make me feel like a frog savings-bank," said Radwalader.
"There you are!" cried Mrs. Carnby triumphantly. "That would never have
arisen as an objection in the mind of any one who had known what it is
to be a Parisian."
"Or a frog savings-bank," said Radwalader. "No, I suppose not. I can't
seem to live down the fact that I was born in the shadow of Independence
Hall. But I'm doing so much to make up for the bad beginnings of my
present incarnation, that I shall undoubtedly be a Parisian in my next.
Have you been here long, Mr. Vane?"
"Three days."
"Do you speak French?" put in Mrs. Carnby. "No? What a pity! You've no
idea what a difference it makes."
"I've only such a smattering as one gets in school and college," said
Andrew. "Of course I didn't _know_ I was coming over here. But, after
all, one seems to get on very well with English."
"That's just the trouble, Mr. Vane," volunteered Mrs. Ratchett. "So many
Americans are content just to 'get on' over here. That isn't the cue to
Paris at all! It only means that you and she are on terms of bowing
acquaintance. You'll never get to know her till you can talk to her in
her own tongue."
"Or listen to her talk to you," observed Radwalader. "So long as we're
using the feminine gender--"
"Oh!" interrupted Mrs. Carnby. "A remark like that _does_ come with
_extreme_ grace from you, I _must_ say. Here," she added, turning to
Mrs. Ratchett, and indicating Radwalader with her fish-fork, "here's a
man, my dear, who spent two solid hours of last Monday telling me the
story of his life. And it reminded me precisely of a peacock--one long,
stuck-up tale with a hundred I's in it. Radwalader, you're a brute!"
Carnby, with his eyes fixed vacantly upon a spot midway between a
pepper-mill and a little dish of salted almonds, appeared to be
revolving some complicated business problem in his mind; and, as his
wife caught sight of him, her fish-fork swung round a quarter-circle in
her fingers, like a silver weathercock, until, instead of Radwalader, it
indicated the point of her husband's nose.
"That person," she said to Andrew, "is either in Trieste or Buda. His
company has an incapable agent in both cities, and whenever he glares at
vacancy, like a hairdresser's image, I know he is in either one town or
the other. With practice, I shall come to detect the shade of difference
in his expression which will tell me which it is. Mr. Ratchett--some
more of the _eperlans_?"
Ratchett was deeply engaged in dressing morsels of smelts in little
overcoats of _sauce tartare_, assisting them carefully with his knife to
scramble aboard his fork, and, having braced them there firmly with
cubes of creamed potato, conveying the whole arrangement to his mouth,
where he instantly secured it from escape by popping in a piece of bread
upon its very heels. He looked up, as Mrs. Carnby spoke to him, murmured
"'k you," and immediately returned to the business in hand. Radwalader
and Mrs. Ratchett had fallen foul of each other over a chance remark of
his, and were now just disappearing into a fog of art discussion, from
which, in his voice, an abrupt "Besnard" popped, at intervals, as
indignantly as a ball from a Roman candle, or, in hers, the word
"Whistler" rolled forth with an inflection which suggested the name of a
cathedral.
"Tell me a little about yourself," said Mrs. Carnby, turning again to
Andrew.
"If it's to be about myself," he answered, "I think it's apt to be
little indeed. I've been in college almost three years, but I've been
kept back, more or less, by a touch of fever I picked up on a trip to
Cuba. It crops out every now and again, and knocks me into
good-for-nothingness for a while. I'm not sure that I shall go back to
Harvard. You see, I want to _do_ something."
"What?" demanded Mrs. Carnby.
"I'm not sure. I'm over here in search of a hint."
"And a very excellent idea, too!" said his hostess. "Because, if you
will keep your eyes open in the American Colony, you'll see about
everything which a man ought _not_ to do; and after that it should be
comparatively easy to make a choice among the few things that remain."
"You're not very flattering to the American Colony," said Andrew.
"That's because I belong to it," replied Mrs. Carnby, "and you'll find
I'm about the only woman in it, able to speak French, who will make that
admission. I belong to it, and I love it--for its name. It's about as
much like America as a cold veal cutlet with its gravy coagulated--if
you've ever seen _that_!--is like the same thing fresh off the grill.
But I don't allow any one but myself to say so!"
"You're patriotic," suggested Andrew.
"Only passively. I'm extremely doubtful as to the exact location of
'God's country,' and, even if you were to prove to my satisfaction that
it lies between Seattle and Tampa, I'm not sure I should want to live
there. America's a kind of conservatory on my estate. I don't care to
sit in it continually, but, at the same time, I don't like to have other
people throwing stones through the roof. But about what you want to do?"
"I really haven't the most remote idea. I want it to be something worth
while--something which will attract attention."
"Nothing does, nowadays," said Mrs. Carnby, "except air-ships and
remarriage within two hours of divorce."
"What _are_ you talking about?" asked Mrs. Ratchett, suddenly abandoning
the argument in which it was evident that she was coming out second
best.
"My choice of a profession," replied Andrew. "I don't want to make a
mistake. But everything seems to be overcrowded."
"Exactly," observed Radwalader. "It isn't so much a question of
selecting what's right as of getting what's left. Haven't you a special
talent?"
"I'm afraid not," said Andrew.
"And if you had, it wouldn't do you much good in the States," commented
Mrs. Carnby. "Nothing counts over there but money and social position.
It's the only country on earth where it's less blessed to be gifted than
received."
"I had thought of civil engineering," said Andrew.
"Civil engineering?" repeated Mrs. Carnby. "But, my dear Mr. Vane,
_that's_ not a profession. It's only a synonym for getting on in
society. We're all of us civil engineers!"
She pushed back her chair as she spoke.
"We'll wait for you in the _salon_," she added, "and, meanwhile, Mrs.
Ratchett and I will think up a profession for Mr. Vane. Jeremy, you're
to give them the shortest cigars you have."
"I was once in the same quandary," said Radwalader to Andrew, when the
men were left alone, "and concluded to let Time answer the question for
me. You may have noticed that Time is prone to reticence. So far, he has
not committed himself one way or another."
"I'm afraid I haven't the patience for that," said Andrew. "Besides,
it's different in America. One _has_ to do something over there. It's
almost against the law to be idle."
"Of course. The only remedy for that is to live in Paris. You might do
that. It's a profession all by itself--of faith, if nothing else. Only
one has need of the golden means."
"I think I am a homeopathist, so far as Europe is concerned," said
Andrew. "I'm already a little homesick for the Common."
"It's a bad pun," answered Radwalader, "but is there anything in America
but--the common?"
"You can't expect me to agree with you there."
"I don't. I never expect any one to agree with me. It takes all the
charm out of conversation. You may remember that Mark Twain once said
that it's a difference of opinion which makes horse-races. He should
have made it human races. That would have been truer, and so, more
original. But a homeopathist is only a man who has never tried
allopathy. You must let me convert you by showing you something of
Paris. If I've any profession at all, it's that of guide."
"You're very kind," said Andrew, "but you mustn't let your courtesy put
you to inconvenience on my account. There must be a penalty attached to
knowing Paris well, in the form of fellow country-men who want to be
shown about."
"'Never a rose but has its thorn,'" quoted Radwalader. "If you know
Paris well, you're overrun; and if you don't, you're run over. Of the
two, the former is the less objectionable. When we leave here, perhaps
you'd like to go out to the races for a while? If you haven't been,
Auteuil is well worth seeing of a Sunday afternoon."
"I should be very glad," said Andrew.
"Then we'll consider it agreed. I see Carnby is getting to his feet. He
is about to make his regular postprandial speech. It is one to be
commended for its brevity."
"The ladies?" suggested Jeremy interrogatively.
"By all means!" said Radwalader, as his cigarette sizzled into the
remainder of his coffee. "It's a toast to which we all respond."
"By the way," said Ratchett, as they moved toward the _portieres_, "I
was going to ask you chaps about membership in the Volney."
The three men gathered in a group, and Andrew, seeing that they were
about to speak of something in which he had no concern, passed into the
_salon_. Here he was surprised to find three women instead of two--still
more surprised when the newcomer wheeled suddenly, and came toward him
with both hands outstretched.
"How do you _do_?" she said. "What a charming surprise! Mrs. Carnby was
just speaking of you, and I've been telling her what jolly times we used
to have last summer at Beverly. How delightful to find you here! Mrs.
Carnby's my dearest friend, you must know, Mr. Vane."
"Miss Palffy is one of the few people to whom I always feel equal,"
observed Mrs. Carnby.
"I can say the same, I'm sure," agreed Andrew.
"That means that you and I are to be friends as well, then," answered
Mrs. Carnby, "because things that are equal to the same thing are bound
to be equal to each other. Are you going out with Jeremy, Margery?"
"Yes--our usual Sunday spree, you know. He's a dear!"
She bent over as she spoke and buried her nose in one of the big roses
on the table.
"Lord, girl, but I'm glad to see you again!" said the inner voice of
Andrew Vane.