“An’ you are pleas wiz Paris, Monsieur’ Astang?” demanded Madame
Marotte the next morning as Hastings came into the breakfast-room of
the pension, rosy from his plunge in the limited bath above.
“I am sure I shall like it,” he replied, wondering at his own
depression of spirits.
The maid brought him coffee and rolls. He returned the vacant glance
of the big-headed young man and acknowledged diffidently the salutes
of the snuffy old gentlemen. He did not try to finish his coffee, and
sat crumbling a roll, unconscious of the sympathetic glances of Madame
Marotte, who had tact enough not to bother him.
Presently a maid entered with a tray on which were balanced two bowls
of chocolate, and the snuffy old gentlemen leered at her ankles. The
maid deposited the chocolate at a table near the window and smiled at
Hastings. Then a thin young lady, followed by her counterpart in all
except years, marched into the room and took the table near the window.
They were evidently American, but Hastings, if he expected any sign of
recognition, was disappointed. To be ignored by compatriots intensified
his depression. He fumbled with his knife and looked at his plate.
The thin young lady was talkative enough. She was quite aware of
Hastings’ presence, ready to be flattered if he looked at her, but
on the other hand she felt her superiority, for she had been three
weeks in Paris and he, it was easy to see, had not yet unpacked his
steamer-trunk.
Her conversation was complacent. She argued with her mother upon the
relative merits of the Louvre and the Bon Marché, but her mother’s part
of the discussion was mostly confined to the observation, “Why, Susie!”
The snuffy old gentlemen had left the room in a body, outwardly polite
and inwardly raging. They could not endure the Americans, who filled
the room with their chatter.
The big-headed young man looked after them with a knowing cough,
murmuring, “Gay old birds!”
“They look like bad old men, Mr. Bladen,” said the girl.
To this Mr. Bladen smiled and said, “They’ve had their day,” in a tone
which implied that he was now having his.
“And that’s why they all have baggy eyes,” cried the girl. “I think
it’s a shame for young gentlemen—”
“Why, Susie!” said the mother, and the conversation lagged.
After a while Mr. Bladen threw down the _Petit Journal_, which he daily
studied at the expense of the house, and turning to Hastings, started
to make himself agreeable. He began by saying, “I see you are American.”
To this brilliant and original opening, Hastings, deadly homesick,
replied gratefully, and the conversation was judiciously nourished by
observations from Miss Susie Byng distinctly addressed to Mr. Bladen.
In the course of events Miss Susie, forgetting to address herself
exclusively to Mr. Bladen, and Hastings replying to her general
question, the _entente cordiale_ was established, and Susie and her
mother extended a protectorate over what was clearly neutral territory.
“Mr. Hastings, you must not desert the pension every evening as Mr.
Bladen does. Paris is an awful place for young gentlemen, and Mr.
Bladen is a horrid cynic.”
Mr. Bladen looked gratified.
Hastings answered, “I shall be at the studio all day, and I imagine I
shall be glad enough to come back at night.”
Mr. Bladen, who, at a salary of fifteen dollars a week, acted as agent
for the Pewly Manufacturing Company of Troy, N.Y., smiled a sceptical
smile and withdrew to keep an appointment with a customer on the
Boulevard Magenta.
Hastings walked into the garden with Mrs. Byng and Susie, and, at their
invitation, sat down in the shade before the iron gate.
The chestnut trees still bore their fragrant spikes of pink and white,
and the bees hummed among the roses, trellised on the white-walled
house.
A faint freshness was in the air. The watering carts moved up and
down the street, and a clear stream bubbled over the spotless gutters
of the rue de la Grande Chaumière. The sparrows were merry along the
curb-stones, taking bath after bath in the water and ruffling their
feathers with delight. In a walled garden across the street a pair of
blackbirds whistled among the almond trees.
Hastings swallowed the lump in his throat, for the song of the birds
and the ripple of water in a Paris gutter brought back to him the sunny
meadows of Millbrook.
“That’s a blackbird,” observed Miss Byng; “see him there on the bush
with pink blossoms. He’s all black except his bill, and that looks as
if it had been dipped in an omelet, as some Frenchman says—”
“Why, Susie!” said Mrs. Byng.
“That garden belongs to a studio inhabited by two Americans,” continued
the girl serenely, “and I often see them pass. They seem to need a
great many models, mostly young and feminine—”
“Why, Susie!”
“Perhaps they prefer painting that kind, but I don’t see why they
should invite five, with three more young gentlemen, and all get into
two cabs and drive away singing. This street,” she continued, “is
dull. There is nothing to see except the garden and a glimpse of the
Boulevard Montparnasse through the rue de la Grande Chaumière. No one
ever passes except a policeman. There is a convent on the corner.”
“I thought it was a Jesuit College,” began Hastings, but was at once
overwhelmed with a Baedecker description of the place, ending with, “On
one side stand the palatial hotels of Jean Paul Laurens and Guillaume
Bouguereau, and opposite, in the little Passage Stanislas, Carolus
Duran paints the masterpieces which charm the world.”
The blackbird burst into a ripple of golden throaty notes, and from
some distant green spot in the city an unknown wild-bird answered with
a frenzy of liquid trills until the sparrows paused in their ablutions
to look up with restless chirps.
Then a butterfly came and sat on a cluster of heliotrope and waved
his crimson-banded wings in the hot sunshine. Hastings knew him for a
friend, and before his eyes there came a vision of tall mulleins and
scented milkweed alive with painted wings, a vision of a white house
and woodbine-covered piazza,—a glimpse of a man reading and a woman
leaning over the pansy bed,—and his heart was full. He was startled a
moment later by Miss Byng.
“I believe you are homesick!” Hastings blushed. Miss Byng looked at
him with a sympathetic sigh and continued: “Whenever I felt homesick
at first I used to go with mamma and walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. I
don’t know why it is, but those old-fashioned gardens seemed to bring
me nearer home than anything in this artificial city.”
“But they are full of marble statues,” said Mrs. Byng mildly; “I don’t
see the resemblance myself.”
“Where is the Luxembourg?” inquired Hastings after a silence.
“Come with me to the gate,” said Miss Byng. He rose and followed her,
and she pointed out the rue Vavin at the foot of the street.
“You pass by the convent to the right,” she smiled; and Hastings went.