THE doctor gave Jean a thermometer as a parting present, and the Curé
brought him a little medal of St. Francis; he gave it to Jean after
mass on his last morning.
“Always wear this, my son,” he said, “it has been blessed by the
Bishop. I tried to get a eucalyptus rosary which had received the Holy
Father’s own touch, but it had been sent by mistake to Adélaide la
Court, who is just going into service. It was necessary for her to be
safeguarded in every way. I think, however, you will find this medal
very efficacious. Do not forget your prayers, go to Mass regularly, and
never miss a fast. You will find Paris very different in some ways from
St. Jouin, at least I have always gathered so; but the Church is the
same, nothing ever changes that. Keep your vocation.”
Jean nodded--he was not quite sure what his vocation was, but he
foresaw no difficulty in keeping it.
Miss Prenderghast had been lying awake half the night, thinking how
she should say good-bye to Jean. She said it very badly; he was all she
had in the world, and she had never really had him. Jean made her a
polite little speech in which he thanked her for all she had done for
him, and Miss Prenderghast said, “Nonsense, somebody had to do it!” and
“For goodness sake, boy, don’t gush; it’s not English.”
Jean hesitated for a moment, bowed, kissed her hand and left her. Then
he ran into the kitchen and threw his arms around Elizabeth.
“For shame, Master Jean,” cried Elizabeth, with gratified horror. “You
a great big man, how could you go for to do such a thing?”
“Oh, Elizabeth,” said Jean, and he was laughing and almost crying at
the same time, “a man must kiss somebody, you know. You’ve been very
good to me, Elizabeth!”
“There! there! Master Jean,” said Elizabeth, who was wholly crying.
“You’ll take care of yourself, my lamb, now, won’t you? And don’t pay
no attention to what nobody says to you in that there wicked Paris full
of hussies and what not? You go your own way, Master Jean dear, and if
you’re ever in want of anything you’ll write and tell me, won’t you? I
know what young men and short commons is, and I’ve saved my wages for
many a year a-purpose!”
“Oh, Elizabeth!” said Jean at last, “but you know a man can’t take
money from a woman!”
“Can’t ’e though, my dear?” said Elizabeth grimly. “Then all I can say
is ’e can take many other things which are a sight worse for ’im--for
’im and for ’er too, for the matter of that! Don’t you go muddlin’ yer
’ead with them notions, and oh! for ’eaven’s sake, Master Jean, don’t
sit in yer wet feet or go short of your food!”
Elizabeth hadn’t any parting present to give Jean--but when he went out
of the kitchen, he ran by a back way across the fields, because he did
not want anyone just then to see his face, and Elizabeth sat at the
kitchen table with her head on her arms, and refused to answer the bell
to clear away the breakfast. She was the only person in St. Jouin who
realized that Jean would never come back again--someone like him would
return, no doubt, with his eyes and his voice, but the Jean D’Ucelles
who ran across the wet, wind-blown fields that autumn morning would be
a different person altogether.
On the railway station Jean found several of his class-mates from
the Lycée, and among them Maurice Golaud, the young officer who was
quartered at St. Jouin.
“Ah, you lucky beggar!” he cried. “Just to think that in seven hours’
time you will be in the heart of the universe, while I am wasting away
in this old, aimless penitentiary of a spot. You don’t know what’s
before you, my boy! The cafés, the good little drinks, the fine little
dinners, the dear little women! I am sick for the sound of the streets
and the lights down the Champs-Elysées in the evening! What a world,
and what a place this country, where you go about knee-deep in mud to
each other’s funerals, with only the cows to look at! But you’ll be
strange at first, _mon cher_! Look here, I know what I’ll do,” and
he took out a card with an address on it and pushed it into Jean’s
hand. “Go and call there,” he said, as the train started. “If I can’t
run up and put you through your paces, you’ll see someone there who’s
worth seeing; at least she is usually considered to be so!” Maurice
gave a significant twist to his moustache as he spoke. He was really
more proud of the lady who lived at the address than of that extremely
handsome feature, in fact he considered them both his features, and
he thought he was very generous to let Jean have the unexampled
opportunity of observing them. As for Jean, he put the address
carefully in his pocket; it seemed to him that after all he should not
be so very friendless in Paris.
The train took its short, uneven way through the flat lands of France.
Poplars and a pale sky, with peasants working in the fields, stretched
through an eternity of daylight.
Here and there towers of grey stone and groups of tall, narrow houses
broke through the long monotony of the fields, and Jean’s heart beat
faster with the hope that this time it was really Paris.
The rain came on again, and the short day was closing before Jean
realized that the sudden stream of grey houses was after all not going
to break again into empty fields, but was Paris herself, the great
insignificant fringe of the world’s enigma, the city where there is
most pleasure and least happiness--the cleverest thought and the
vainest action--where more ideas are born and more perish in their
tarnished bloom than any other place on earth. None of these things did
Jean dream of, as out of the grey evening the lights of Paris broke,
wave after wave of them, through the curtain of rain, like handfuls
of splendid jewels prodigally flung into colourless mud. And with the
lights came the sound--the sound of Paris, which is so different from
the soft, dull roar of London or the sharp, hysterical scream of New
York, the sound that is pitilessly light and infinitely gay--the voice
of Paris, which is like the laughter of a heartless woman mocking at a
life she has wrecked. And when Jean heard it he drew his breath in for
a moment and felt afraid.
Jean had never seen so many people in his life as he saw at the
terminus of the Gare St. Lazare, nor had he ever seen people move so
freely and so quickly; there was neither stiffness nor bustle in the
swiftly circulating crowd. He dragged his valise on to the platform,
feeling strange and isolated in this new, bewildering world.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said a voice behind him, “but I think you
must be Monsieur le Baron. I come from the Comte D’Ucelles, sir.”
Henri would have liked extremely to have come to Jean’s assistance, but
beyond seeing after his scanty luggage and placing the oldest rug over
him in the motor as comfortably as possible, there was nothing he could
do. Still, Jean saw the friendliness in his eyes and liked it. It was
the only friendliness he was to see for some time.
As he was dressing as quickly as he could for eight o’clock dinner
(his train had been late and Henri had warned him to hurry) the Comte
D’Ucelles tapped at his door and entered. Romain was a man who wore
fifty years easily, he had a most charming manner and a perpetual
smile; what he looked like when he wasn’t smiling no one ever knew, for
no one had ever seen his face in repose. He smiled when he was pleased,
when he was bored, and when he was angry. He did not smile when he
was amused, because he had not been amused for some time; he had long
ago worn out his capacity for amusement. He met Jean with a generous
outburst of reproach.
Upon his honour--was this really Jean? And why on earth hadn’t he seen
him all these preposterous years? Jean had really behaved abominably
to them; and how immensely he had grown, and what a charming time he
would have in Paris! He asked after Miss Prenderghast, he rallied Jean
on the broken hearts he was certain to have left behind him in the
country; he made the most lavish excuses for having put Jean into such
a wretched room, though it was the handsomest Jean had ever seen.
“It’s intolerable, my dear fellow, that I can’t put you up
permanently,” he went on, with his hard, light eyes wandering about the
stately apartment and taking in the shabby luggage, the shy youth, the
pitiful, small appearance which made Romain after all think that his
wife had been right; “but as a matter of fact, you know, your good aunt
is a little strict--young men will be young men, and in Paris--well!
well! Paris isn’t a young man’s class of the Catechism, and the home
is sacred! I assure you, my dear boy, I keep it so, and so must you,
you know, when you marry; and meanwhile have rooms--have rooms--they’ve
fascinating places in Paris to be had for almost nothing; we’ll look
into all that to-morrow. And now we mustn’t keep your aunt waiting.
To-morrow I’ll send you to a decent tailor; that suit won’t quite do
for Paris, you know!”
Jean felt it wouldn’t. He had thought it very smart before, but he was
broader and taller than his father, and the sleeves were too short, and
the back too tight; besides, it looked different from his uncle’s.
Romain laughed genially, not cruelly, at Jean’s embarrassment; still
Jean felt that he had disappointed this brilliant being; he wished he
could think of something suitable to say, something dashing and witty
and in the tone of his uncle’s talk; but he could think of nothing. He
had always fancied before that conversation was a means of expressing
what you wanted to say, a direct channel, as it were, for some very
definite idea, but this hardly seemed Romain’s notion of the art. His
words seemed to stand like a screen between Jean and his thoughts,
and to take the place of some hard, light enamel covering a hidden
substance. He ran on with his continual easy banter, quite as if he
were Jean’s age, or as if Jean were his; and as if nothing in the world
mattered, or could be worth a moment’s uneasiness or discomfort.
“We’ve very few people to-night,” he said. “I would have kept you quite
to ourselves, you know, if I could, but one’s funny little social
life here beats up like a tide; you cannot keep the waves off your
particular piece of shore without being as ridiculous as King Canute
was with the Atlantic, in your charming old England--which reminds me,
my dear boy, I am sending you in to-night with an American girl; she
can’t talk French, of course, or at least we hope against hope that
she won’t try, and no one else can talk English, so you’ll have the
very great honour! Make an impression upon her, I assure you it’s quite
worth your while; she’s immensely rich and immensely handsome, and is
going to be, I believe, quite the rage. I must confess to you American
women don’t suit me, I prefer flesh and blood in a woman, not sawdust
and cold steel. All the same, she has a ravishing figure, and I believe
the figure of her income is still more magnificent. They may both be
quite natural, for all I know to the contrary, but your dear aunt has
made certain of the money!”
Jean was accustomed to a large house full of old things, but they
were an entirely different type of old things from that of which his
Uncle Romain had acquired possession. They were old because they were
worn out and shabby, they were not old because they were precious and
rare. The reception-rooms through which he passed with Romain to the
drawing-room, where Madame D’Ucelles awaited them, were not larger
than those he had left behind him, but they seemed so, because of
their extraordinary brilliant emptiness. The first that they passed
through had nothing in it but portraits, and a wonderful old bronze on
a pedestal; this opened into another, with very little, very perfect
Louis XVI. furniture. The chimney was in marble, with a delicate Sèvres
china clock; in the corner was a grand piano covered with ancient
jewel-encrusted embroidery. A screen of painted leather stood by the
side of the fireplace, and one wall was entirely covered with shelves
of oriental china. Madame D’Ucelles and a small group of friends
stood by the fire. Jean had seen evening dress before in a provincial
theatre, but it was not in the least like this. He hardly recognized
his aunt in the bedizened, exposed, and highly coloured lady leaning
over an old rose-pink sofa in an attitude that she tried to make as
gracefully light as she could.
Madame la Comtesse D’Ucelles was extremely handicapped in the social
race by a hopeless lack of the _souplesse_ she adored.
One of Romain’s friends said of her: “Our poor Marie would so love to
be thought indiscreet, but what can one say? She fights hard to produce
the appearance of evil, but the upper lip and the stubborn _bourgeois_
blood refuse to permit such laxity. She is hopelessly _bonne femme_,
she cannot be anything wilder than a dear old cow. It is true that she
can, if she likes, kick over the pail, but what she can’t do is to
produce champagne instead of good rich country milk, and that, poor
dear, is what she wants to do! She cannot go to anyone’s head, she is
not intoxicating, she can only (look at our good Romain) help to create
an _embonpoint_!”
Madame D’Ucelles’ upper lip might be against her, but she and her
dressmaker had fought hard to defeat it! Of all the little group around
her, she most looked to her nephew from the country, the extreme
presentment of the ultra-fashionable life he had heard of and read
about. Perhaps if Marie had known of this impression she might have
allowed it to soften her manner a little; but as it was, she fixed her
small, round, brown eyes on Jean, and despised him.
He was all the things she hated--poor, young, without even an incipient
material value, and yet, even in his badly-fitting clothes and in the
midst of a room full of strange sounds and light, and critical human
beings, there was in him that ineradicable ease of race.
He was shy but he was not awkward; he was embarrassed but he was not
as the men of her class would have been, clumsy. He did not, indeed,
know quite what to say, but he lifted clear eyes to her face; and if
there was anything that Madame D’Ucelles never forgave, it was dignity
in an inferior. Jean had not felt his uncle’s light laughter at his
appearance half as much as he felt the scornful glitter in his aunt’s
eyes. Without moving her elbow from the sofa on which she leaned, she
gave him her heavily bejewelled fingers to kiss.
“Your train must have been late, I fancy,” she said. “I hope you left
your aunt well in the country; we must discuss our family affairs by
and by. Miss Vanderpool, let me introduce my nephew to you--le Baron
D’Ucelles, Miss Vanderpool. Romain, dinner has already been announced.”
Jean turned his attention to a magnificent young woman who seemed to
take instant possession of him with a flicker of her stony, flat, grey
eyes.
“I am delighted you can talk English,” she said to her companion.
“My! I do get so weary of trying to slip into French; not that I ever
do try very hard, though I take lessons every day, but one has to
understand a bit, so as not to be taken in.”
Jean did not imagine that the young woman beside him would ever run
much risk in that direction. Pauline Vanderpool was indeed, as Romain
had told him, a very handsome young woman, but Jean thought she could
never under any circumstances have been a young girl. She was dressed
with consummate taste, though she wore rather too many pearls. She had
the finished manner of a woman who is accustomed to admiring obedience,
and he could never imagine anyone venturing either to deceive her or to
disagree with her.
“I think the Comtesse is a real smart woman,” she obligingly added to
Jean, as they took their seats. “She’s your aunt, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is my uncle’s wife,” said Jean.
“Well! that’s a good enough aunt in America,” conceded his companion.
“She says she likes me, she says she adores me; do you think she’s
sincere?”
Jean looked rather helpless.
“I don’t know my aunt very well,” he said at last.
Pauline threw back her head and laughed.
“Well, it’s easy to see that your mother was an Englishwoman,” she
said. “Why, if I’d given your Uncle Romain that opening, he’d have sent
me blushing into next week.”
“I’m afraid I am very stupid, mademoiselle,” said poor Jean. “I’ve only
just come to Paris.” It was evident that whatever blushing there was
going to be, would be entirely on Jean’s part.
Pauline laughed again.
“I suppose you are going to live right away with the D’Ucelles, aren’t
you?” she asked curiously.
“No, I don’t think so, mademoiselle,” said Jean.
“My! but that’s odd,” cried Pauline, regarding him closely. “Why ever
not?--where are you going to live, then?”
“I shall find rooms to-morrow, I imagine.”
“You people over here are funny,” said Pauline. “I suppose as your
uncle and aunt haven’t any children, you are their heir, aren’t you?”
Jean shrugged his shoulders; he was getting angry, and it improved his
manner.
“I am really afraid you must ask them, mademoiselle,” he said gently.
“I know so very little myself about their affairs.”
“I suppose you have money of your own, then?” inquired the relentless
Pauline.
“Mademoiselle, I have enough,” said Jean, trembling with rage.
“All the same,” Pauline went on, “I think it’s real mean of them not to
keep you on here. Why, their house is as big as an hotel. Doesn’t it
make you mad?”
“If you do not mind, mademoiselle, I should prefer not to discuss my
relations in a language that they do not understand,” said Jean, biting
his lip.
Pauline stared at him.
“Goodness me!” she exclaimed. “You wouldn’t discuss them in a language
they _could_, I suppose?”
Jean hesitated.
“In France,” he said gently, “it is not our custom to discuss our
relations at all.” And this time Pauline did understand. She did not
blush, nor did she show any sign of displeasure. She measured Jean with
a calculating eye; he was a negligible quantity, poor Jean--he was not
even good looking; his face was too thin and too pallid, his features
too angular, only his clear-cut, sensitive mouth and a certain shining
eagerness in his vivid dark eyes held the observer’s attention, but
they did not hold Pauline’s.
“In America,” she said, with calm distinctness, “we discuss what we
choose, and I guess I intend to allow myself the very same licence over
here!” And she turned a beautiful white shoulder upon Jean and devoted
the rest of dinner to her other neighbour.
It was the second time that evening in which Jean discovered that if
you have no material value you are not supposed to claim the right of a
spiritual one.
Romain laughed at him after dinner.
“My dear boy!” he said, “what on earth did you say to La Belle
Américaine to make her deluge poor Le Blanc with her atrocious French.
He says she gave him a tooth ache; were you trying to snub her?”
Jean flushed scarlet.
“You did not tell me she had no manners!” he muttered.
Romain laughed again.
“My poor child,” he said, “good manners are historical nowadays; they
are the survival of race. One does not expect them from Americans; they
have--those charming children of yesterday--nothing to survive from. It
is true one hears of the Pilgrim Fathers, but that can hardly be looked
upon as a satisfactory pedigree, particularly as one gathers from the
absence of all allusion to the mothers that ‘ces gens-là’ married
beneath them! I don’t offer people advice as a rule, it might bore them
and it would certainly bore me; still I will go so far as to say to you
that you mustn’t think too much about manners. You see the rich have
inherited the earth, but they’ve kept, poor dears, the manners of the
soil, and it’s considered a little diplomatic just now to meet them
half way. You take me, perhaps? An air just a little less rigid than
your own, my dear Jean, will find itself more at home in Paris. Don’t
trouble to go into the drawing-room again; if you’re tired go to bed.”
Jean escaped with relief. He thought his Uncle Romain fascinating, but
he felt horribly raw and exposed, and quite appallingly young. When he
reached his room he found that Henri had unpacked all his things, and
put the thermometer and the medal on the dressing-table. There was an
absence of direct utility about these memorials that went to Jean’s
very heart.
At the sight of his incompetent treasures, all the jumbled impressions
of the day rose up before him, the surprises, the shames, the
bewilderments, and the loneliness. He too, like them, had nothing about
him that seemed fitted to shine in this new existence; but they were
more fortunate than he, for they did not lie awake far into the night
wishing that they were ten years older, and could talk without meaning
anything, and had a new dress-coat.
They lay on the dressing-table surrounded by beautiful silver
ornaments, quite as if they were on the old wooden washing-stand in St.
Jouin and not in the least aware of any depreciation in their value.