CHAPTER IV
“MY dear fellow,” said Romain, wandering vaguely into the breakfast-room at about eleven the following morning. “I really am quite desolated, but I find I can’t take you to the Bank to-day. It appears that I promised your aunt in some dreadful forgotten hour to go to a wedding, a funeral, or a christening—I never can keep any account of church functions, can you?—of a distant cousin on her side of the family. You and I, my dear Jean, manage better; we keep, as it were, our relatives down—between us I doubt if we could raise half a dozen; but I have always noticed a terrible tendency in families such as your aunt’s to have relations, here, there, and everywhere, and such substantial people too; and one can’t get away from substantial people in church. For my part I am a good Catholic, I think I may fairly say. I have the mind of a Byzantine, but I do not like the personal note in religion. I would so very much rather not know whom I am praying beside. A smart wedding is one thing, but youraunt’s relations do not have smart weddings. One goes to out-of-the-way churches where large, red-faced women in purple dresses weep into their handkerchiefs. I do not find myself inspired to comfort them. No, I have had my déjeuner, thanks, in my room—and you?”
It seemed that Henri had brought Jean something more than an hour ago.
“Yes,” said Romain thoughtfully, “Henri is an excellent servant, he thinks of things. Do you know I have such a good idea. He shall take you to the Bank this morning, and afterwards find you rooms! After all I do not think I should be of the least use in looking for rooms, candidly—I am not a man of affairs, and when it comes to questions of money I am very like the lilies of the field; as I have neither toiled nor spun, you know, I don’t quite appreciate how to economize. I daresay Henri knows a great deal about Paris, and I recommend you to find out what. Henri, take Monsieur le Baron to this address, and afterwards put yourself at his disposal to look for rooms. Now, my dear Jean, I don’t think there is anything more I can do for you, is there? Your aunt finds herself a little fatigued this morning, and I believe will not be able to give herself the pleasure of seeing you. That matters the less as I shall expect you, of course, to look on this house as your headquarters; come in and out whenever you like, you know. Au revoir!”
It would hardly be worth while relating the parting blessing of Romain if Jean had been so fortunate as to see him in the weeks that followed; but though he called six times upon his uncle in the next fortnight, he never found Romain in. Once indeed he met him in the evening entering a café, but Romain did not seem to see him. He was very much pre-occupied at the moment, preserving in his own inimitable way the sanctities of the home; but there was something in his eyes as he looked at Jean without seeing him which decided Jean not to call again without an invitation; and the invitation did not come. It was to Henri instead that Jean owed his introduction to Paris.
So this was Paris—Paris the siren city of all the world—this drenched, grey, violently noisy spectacle. The streets were full of thick and greasy mud, a multitude of shrieking taxis, thundering drays, and bustling tradesmen’s carts flung themselves fantastically through the crowded thoroughfares. The shrouded, dripping houses seemed to Jean to look disreputably, unwholesomely fatigued; the raw, heavy air made him shiver, and hurt his chest.
“Could we,” he asked Henry, “go by the Louvre and Nôtre Dame?”
Henri looked surprised, but he only replied:
“Where you wish, Monsieur; that you see away there on your left is the Louvre. Myself I think ittriste, but it is worse inside; there is a cemeterythere, and a cemetery indoors—there is something about it that chills the spine! Monsieur does not want to enter now, does he?”
“Just a minute,” pleaded Jean, “only a minute, if we have time.”
“But yes,” said Henri, giving in with a good grace when he found he must. “All the time in the world, only Monsieur le Baron must not expect to find much to amuse him in the Louvre; places of that kind in Paris are chiefly valuable for the English and the Americans—for that, yes, they are useful; but for us, I assure Monsieur, they are not at all considered the thing. There is the Luxembourg, now, which is far more gay, and one need not have been dead many years before one appears in it. But Monsieur will please himself.”
Jean did please himself; he left Henri in an outer court, and hardly knowing what led him, Jean went straight through the long corridor to the little room at the end where against her red curtain the Venus of the soul leans a little forward in tender welcome to her worshippers. Jean stood there for a long time, his hat in his hand, his eyes full of tears, looking at her. He felt as if amongst a crowd of hostile strangers he had seen his mother’s face.
There are certain moments in life that can never be repeated—one’s first great sorrow—one’s first great temptation—and one’s first sight of a divinely beautiful created thing.
Henri regarded Jean with perplexity when he came out of the Louvre.
“Monsieur le Baron has perhaps met a friend?” he asked inquisitively.
Jean blushed a little.
“Yes,” he said simply, “I have met a friend.”
“Monsieur begins well,” replied Henri with relief. “In Paris one needs friends. And now for the Bank, Monsieur le Baron. This to your left here is the Luxembourg; in the summer the garden has a mostchicappearance. One finds there the smartest nursemaids in Paris; there are also pictures within. I have an idea that we may find Monsieur rooms behind the Luxembourg. I shall make the endeavour; since Monsieur is to be alone at first, cheerful surroundings are of importance. Here is the Banque de Paris et desPays-Bas, as Monsieur le Baron sees.”
Jean hesitated a moment before the heavy front of his future prison. He knew quite well it would be to him a prison, and he feared his first deliberate entrance into it. He had not realized how he had counted on his light-hearted, unembarrassed uncle to help him make the first plunge into a serious life, but he remembered that he was after all Jean D’Ucelles, and that he would not have liked the Venus of Milo to be ashamed of him; so he pushed back the heavy doors and entered, presenting his letter quite firmly to a youth who was under the impression that it was his place asdoorkeeper to impede as far as possible anyone who wished to go out or in. After a contemptuous stare at Jean, he turned the letter over, whistled, and vanished. By and by a much more important individual requested Jean to follow him; and he passed through a green-baize door shrouded in mystery, and found himself in the Directors’ room.
The Director gave him fully five minutes; he told him where to go next morning, and said that he might begin his duties then, and that the head clerk would tell him what to do. The Director asked after the Comte D’Ucelles and suggested that some day Jean might dine with him. Then he rang the bell and dismissed him. The one idea that had come to Jean during this important interview was that there was something the matter with his clothes. He explained his fears to Henri and consulted him about Romain’s tailor, though he thought he would probably prove too expensive.
“Why should Monsieur le Baron pay for his clothes at all?” asked Henri. “The name is the same.”
Jean was very indignant with Henri, which was a mistake, because Henri instantly retired into his shell.
“Mon Dieu!” he said to himself. “They come from the country with their eyes glued shut and their mouths open, and then wonder why they remain hungry! It is, after all, only in Paristhat we know how to get the world between our teeth! Let him learn this! For myself, I shall do better to keep my mouth shut. It is a terrible task to teach a fool.” And so Jean lost his only friend in Paris.
In the end Jean ordered the suit, and was relieved to find that he should not have to pay for it at once.
“He has come to Paris straight from thebon Dieu,” thought Henri. “Quelle bêtise!”
“Monsieur le Baron will get very wet if he wishes to go as far as Nôtre Dame,” he remarked aloud. “But from this bridge here across the Seine we can see it very well. I should say if anything better; it is not a fashionable church!”
Jean strained his eyes through the curtain of rain to catch the towers of Nôtre Dame. To-day there was no sunshine, and the cathedral crouched menacingly under the dispirited sky, a big, colourless block of time-defiant stone. Henri shivered ostentatiously—he did not wish to encourage Jean to remain out longer in the rain. He ventured to suggest that rain in Paris being, as a well known fact, highly dangerous for strangers, Monsieur le Baron would do well first to get something of a cordial nature to drink, and then to find his lodgings as soon as possible. Jean obeyed both suggestions, and Henri benefited, as he had intended, by the first.
It was not, however, so easy to find lodgings;everything—even the least attractive rooms at the top of the steepest flight of stairs—seemed to Jean’s country mind wickedly extravagant.
“But one cannot need to pay all that just for a room to sleep in?” he expostulated over and over again.
“In Paris,” observed Henri, “the very air is worth more than elsewhere, but, Monsieur le Baron, I grieve very much to have to say it, hitherto we have made an attempt to keep to the fashionable quarter. I know very well where we can get rooms cheaper, but I had not wished to mention it. On my return, Monsieur le Comte will snap his fingers and say to me, ‘Then you have buried Monsieur my nephew in a neighbourhood of greengrocers; I am to fall over cabbages in order to see him,hein!’ And yet if one cannot have Bohemian pheasants, one need not starve on soup made from bones! That is how I look at it, Monsieur le Baron. Shall we try another quarter?”
“Yes,” said Jean impatiently. “Any other quarter. I do not wish to be fashionable to sleep! Anywhere that I can find a clean, decent room, and get into it out of this noise and rain, I shall be satisfied.”
“Noise, Monsieur?” said Henri, a little shocked. “What you hear is not noise, it is Paris. Down here by the river then and across the bridge. There, Monsieur, is the Académie Française. People think very much of it, I am told. I prefer Les Capucines,butchacun son goût, non? And here in the Rue de Seine is perhaps something for Monsieur.”
Jean was by this time so tired that even if Numéro 5, Rue de Seine, had been more grey, more dirty, more coldly stuffy and draughty than it was, he would have closed with it thankfully. Henri persisted in seeing the bright side of things—there were but four flights of stairs—the room was, he really thought, a marvel of cheapness; the concierge’s wife said so—there was a café opposite, so convenient for the meals of Monsieur—and then the view! Monsieur, being fresh from the country, would appreciate the fact that it was at the back of the house, where it had the quiet of a desert and a view of the sky itself. Henri thought there was something very cheerful about so many gilt mirrors, and he pointed out to Jean that with the help of a few photographs of beautiful women and a chair, which he could hire for a trifle from Henri’s nephew only two streets away, the room would have a distinguished air that would impress his uncle; in short (with a wink at the concierge’s wife) he thought that Monsieur le Baron was to be congratulated; and now was there anything more that he, Henri, could do for him?
No, Jean thought there wasn’t, and he was very grateful and shook hands so cordially with Henri, not forgetting either to give him ten francs, that Henri felt quite cross and bitter as he went downstairs; he almost refused the ten francs, and allthe rest of the day he was sorry he had not refused them. However, he eased his conscience by speaking very handsomely of Jean to the concierge’s wife, and telling her it would be well worth her while to look after Jean as if he were her own son; and he arranged that Jean should have the armchair for less than his nephew would have wished to charge.
As for Jean, left alone in the gathering dusk of the autumn afternoon, there was nothing more anyone could do for him, and he realized, as he had never done before, what a very great deal there was left for him to do for himself.