CHAPTER III
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 halfthe 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 dearlittle 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 behindhim, “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 certainto 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 couldthink 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, Iprefer 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 auntin 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 thesouplesseshe 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 stubbornbourgeoisblood refuse to permit such laxity. She is hopelesslybonne 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 anembonpoint!”
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 tryvery 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 shouldprefer 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 theycould, 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.