CHAPTER XX
THE big hotel in the Boulevard Malesherbes was the outcome of Madame Torialli’s spirit of compromise. To most people compromise means giving up something in order to obtain its equivalent; to Madame Torialli it meant something quite different. Compromise for her was the appearance of sacrifice with the certainty of compensation. It was necessary for Madame Torialli that she should, for the sake of her husband’s business interests, appeal to the tastes of his pupils and admirers; and as their tastes in general ran in the direction of the appearance of expense lavishly maintained without subtlety or distinction, Madame Torialli ministered to their faith by a modern massive house with a great deal of glass, aportierat the first door, two footmen at the second, a butler of the smartest London type, and large reception rooms in which the florid held an unambiguous sway. Everywhere she had placed busts and portraits, commendations and presentations,of Signor Torialli. “If one must accept vulgarity, it shall at least pay for itself,” said Madame Torialli to her own friends. “If they wish to have something always in front of their eyes in the Boulevard Malesherbes, it shall have the advantage of advertising my husband. I have just hung this last bronze laurel wreath from Germany on a gold mirror. You can imagine how it added to my pleasure to hear a pupil of my husband say it moved her to tears. Tears like that are an extravagance for her and an economy for us. She pays very well for her lessons. Her voice? My friend, you should not ask me for professional secrets—shall we say that it is of gold?”
But thesereception-rooms were only the shell of Madame Torialli’s house. Far away out of the sound of the theatre on the other side of her spacious mansion Madame Torialli made herself a home. Here she had three drawing-rooms in particular which were known all over Paris, and into which none of her husband’s most famous pupils had ever penetrated. Madame Torialli called them her “dull little rooms.” Dull they may have been for eyes which rejoiced in the gorgeous tapestries and expensive marbles that looked even more than their price, and reposed in heavy splendour blocking thesalle de réceptiondownstairs; but to those who climbed the wide marble staircase with its banisters of old fifteenth-centuryiron work, passing through noiseless corridors over soft deep Indian carpets, which sank under the feet like cushions, Madame Torialli’s “dull little rooms” appeared the most exquisite of surprises. If below she had introduced the observer to the difficulties of wealth, here he saw before him the finished, distinctive ease which taste alone can draw from the raw material of money. If she had attacked the senses with an abundance of good things—for even downstairs many of the things were good—here she gave to the expert the sharp asceticism of luxury.
The first of her rooms was called the bronze room. All the walls were painted a pale Nile green, a colour which had the clarity of air and something of the restfulness of sea water. The hangings were of the same shade, and at the end of the room against a heavy portière on a bronze pedestal was one of the finest existing copies of Giovanni da Bologna’s Mercury. The chairs were beautifully carved in fantastic shapes. On a little table by the window stood a bronze bowl full of golden daffodils; the mantelpiece held three or four almost priceless bronzes about four to six inches in height. On the wall that caught most light was a copy by a great artist of the Gioconda. Her soft, slow, secretive smile slipped out into the room like some mysterious and sinister sunshine. The classic serenity of the room made Jean feel as if he had entered a shrine, and somethingin the delicate coldness of its beauty warned him at the same time that there would be no return for his worship.
The second room was called the silver room. There was the same spare priceless simplicity in its arrangement, but the bronzes were replaced by antique silver cups and vases, and the palest shade of silver grey had been introduced into the hangings. Here there were two pictures—one of Whistler’s of a fog on the Thames, and one by a modern French artist of a nude girl sitting on a table.
The last of the three rooms was called the gold room. A piece of old gold embroidery hung from the ceiling to the floor and glimmered like pale sunshine on the darkest day. The sofa, the chairs, and the little gold bibelots scattered here and there in spare and isolated arrangements, struck the same note. There was a picture of Madame herself in this room as a young girl in an orchard in the sunshine; the colour centred in her golden hair, and the sunshine lit up her simple white muslin dress into a dazzling radiance. She had yellow roses in her hands. On the other wall opposite hung a Fra Angelico Madonna. There was gold in that picture too, the faint etherealized gold of Fra Angelico’s dreams; but somehow or other it would not harmonize with anything else. It seemed the only false note. It was as priceless as everything else that Madame Torialli had; ithad cost her a year of her husband’s work; and yet the old saint’s dream refused to be invaluable or to associate with its surroundings. There it hung on the wall, a silent protest—a wandering, golden ghost that mocked urbane humanity and forced modernity to acknowledge a power in which it had refused to believe. Only Madame Torialli was insensible to the picture’s incongruity.
“I wanted just that shade,” she would say; “you see—the angel’s wing? I couldn’t have done without it.” And if those who listened to her saw more than the shade of colour in the angel’s wing they did not tell her so.
When Jean obeyed the written summons of Madame Torialli to call upon her to arrange his future work, he was led by the highest of all Torialli’s handsome functionaries up the marble staircase, and at length into the precincts of Madame Torialli’s “dull little rooms.” She was sitting in the silver room, apparently awaiting his coming. She was dressed in grey and wore a bunch of violets at her throat and at her waist. It seemed to Jean as if he had been led by some strange spell into moonlight, and now beheld the Lady of the Moon. Madame Torialli smiled at the dazzled bewilderment in Jean’s eyes.
“But you like my little things?” she said sweetly. “Well, then, look about you, there is plenty of time. I have very few, as you see, but such as they are, I, too, find them restful. Doyou know that I have a little fancy that we go through three stages of existence. In the first we are very spiritual beings; the innocence of youth makes us hold all reality lightly. We long to be imprisoned in dreams and to escape the brutality of facts; we are led by a breeze to a flower, we go no further than a smile. Our hands tremble before what we dare not touch. This is the first stage. I find it pathetic when I see it in the faces of the very young. You and I have both passed that stage, Monsieur.”
Jean sat down near her. It was true that everything in her rooms was well worth looking at, but there was nothing in them that held his eyes like herself; this exquisite complicated being in silver and violets, with the same faint scent about her that Jean remembered in her letter, and eyes that were as simple as a child’s prayer. She lifted them smilingly to his.
“Shall I go on with my little parable?” she asked.
“But please,” said Jean. He was even conscious that his voice shook a little, it was such a delight to hear her speak. Her voice was like a silver bell.
“The second is more robust,” continued Madame smiling. “It is a passion for reality, for big emotions, for the crash and storm of the maturer senses. It is in this stage that everything happens to a man that can happen! I do not say it isthe happiest of the three stages; it is perhaps the most interesting. At the end of it a man knows himself, and he knows also the reason of many things; but he does not tremble any more. The third stage—and it is at this that I have now arrived, Monsieur—is that he occupies himself with material things; he becomes a collector, a man with a hobby, a creature of comfortable habits and practical good sense. He builds himself on the desert island of his soul a charming little log cabin out of the wreck! I have invited you to see my little log cabin, Monsieur. I hope that you think I have done well with it?”
Madame Torialli’s gentle eyes smiled with a touching mixture of wistfulness and irony. Jean, looking at her with the quick, absorbed sympathy of his sensitive nature, felt that no one had ever done justice to Madame Torialli before; and this is a very dangerous feeling for a man to have about a woman.
“But come,” said Madame, leaning forward a little. “You are in the most interesting of the three stages, you know; let us talk a little about yourself. I found out quite by an accident the other day that I knew your uncle. Monsieur! may I add that I also knew your father?”
“Indeed—yes, Madame,” said Jean simply.
They were silent for a moment.
“And now tell me about your life,” said Madame gently. And Jean told her.
He had never before talked freely to a woman quite of his world and perfectly to his taste. He told her everything, his eyes lit up with the eagerness of his self-revelation; he poured the history of his heart out at her feet like water. Sometimes the tears came into her eyes as she listened to him, and once, when he spoke to her of Margot’s sacrifice and of his ashamed return, she put out her slender white hand and touched him, almost as a mother might.
“Poor boy! poor boy!” she said softly. “But how hard life is!”
When he had finished she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, as if she were thinking intently. The sympathy in her silence seemed to Jean the most beautiful thing he had ever found; except perhaps the sympathy in her voice when she spoke.
“I am glad you have told me all this,” she said. “It has touched me very much that you understood you could speak to me, and I am perhaps a woman not wholly without experience. You have had much to bear, and little happiness from women. Do not, however, believe that all love is fruitless—a lost and wandering fire! It does not always transfix and petrify us with the terrible beauty of the Medusa. I speak very simply to you, not as a woman of the world, but only perhaps as a woman, who, having lived amongst dross all my life, chose gold. Let me show you something.”
Madame Torialli rose as she spoke. She crossed the room to a tiny shrine upon her desk; the two little doors fell back at the touch of a spring. Jean saw nothing very wonderful inside, only the photograph of a man in evening dress—Torialli as he may have looked a hundred times over, on the platform about to sing. The wonderful thing was in Madame Torialli’s eyes. It was a moment of great emotional sincerity, for Madame Torialli loved her husband. For his sake she had left her world, the quiet distinguished world of the best blood in France, and married an artist. It is true that though she had left it, it had only been to bring it after her to his feet; and yet it had needed an imagination, a fine and an honest purpose, for her to take so strange a departure; and she came from the most conservative aristocracy in the world. She had never regretted her impulse. She loved art, as no artist ever loves it; and she knew the world of human beings as no artist can ever know it; and after being the greatest passion of Torialli’s life, she became his most useful possession; and she accepted her position gracefully, and turned it as she did all the other facts of life—to her own advantage.
“Thank you, Madame,” said Jean simply.
“Voyons,” she said, laughing a little, and even blushing through the careful enamelling of her face. “Even old women have in their hearts a corner where they like to play the young girl!Let us return again to our discussion. Your great actress gave you an admirable lesson; the lessons of bad women are often more efficacious than the lessons of good ones. They have a great advantage over the rest of us, for they force you to accept the moral while they have none of the onus of suggesting it to you. For the rest, your poor little friend charms me greatly; for her you must be very careful, my dear boy. She saved you from marrying her, and you in return must save her from failing to marry—the nice young grocer round the corner.”
Jean flushed a little.
“What nice young grocer round the corner?” he asked uneasily.
Madame laughed.
“Come! Come!” she said. “There will always be a young grocer round the corner, and you must be graceful about it. You must not want her to keep always single for your sake. I grant it would be more poetic, but it would not be very kind.”
“But of course I don’t,” said Jean hurriedly. “I haven’t the slightest wish—” he stopped a moment—“but I don’t see why we shouldn’t still be friends,” he added.
Madame laughed again.
“There are only two alternatives, I assure you,” she said. “And it’s like the arrogance of youth to imagine you can invent a third. You may marry the little girl, or you may make the simpler arrangement of a man of your class, but in yoursituation and with her feeling for you—there will be, sooner or later, an arrangement, and an arrangement which will not be easy to explain subsequently to the grocer; and we must always bear that young man in mind.”
Jean was silent for a moment; he was beginning to think differently of Margot; it was as if he already saw her the wife of the grocer. He felt as if he had been a little ridiculous.
“Well, then,” he said. “What should one do?”
“I think one should not remain in her rooms in the first place,” said Madame very softly; “and, in the second, I should persuade Flaubert to give her lessons instead of you.”
“Give up Margot’s voice!” cried Jean reluctantly. Then the figure of the grocer came up and hit him between the eyes.
“It is true she has a good position now,” he said slowly. “I think she will do well. She’s earning quite a lot. But then—there will be the price of her lessons.”
Madame smiled sympathetically.
“But Flaubert charges the profession almost nothing,” she said. “The dear little thing! How funny it must all have been—but for you, my poor boy, how sad!”
Jean had not thought of the situation as a humorous one before, but he already felt older and broader-minded; he laughed a little—the kind of laughter which makes a man slightly ashamed ofhimself afterwards, and much pleased at the time with the company he is in. It was a laugh of a man of the world. Madame Torialli recognised this, and changed the subject.
The greatest art in life is to know when to leave off; and it is an art which few women ever learn. But Madame Torialli knew it to perfection. A few minutes later a knock sounded on the door.
Madame rose to her feet and held out her hand to Jean.
“But this is Louis,” she said, as the fat little Flaubert entered, rubbing his beautifully manicured hands softly together, and smiling more than ever—his most agreeable elastic smile.
“What will you say to me, Louis?” she said, with a light caressing familiarity which contrasted greatly with the little air of respect and consideration she had shown to Jean. “When you hear that I have been talking all this time and not once mentioned business? Perhaps you will not be surprised, however. You know,” she added, turning to Jean, “my husband and Monsieur Flaubert are always laughing at me; I forget the point of everything; but I say to them—Well, after all, is a point always a pleasant thing that one should remember it? Never come to me for business, Monsieur D’Ucelles, but for anything else,” Madame held out her little soft white hand and pressed his gently, “I think you know you may command me. And nowau revoir.”
“Au revoir, Madame,” said Jean, “and a million, million thanks for all your kindness.”
Without a sound the violets and the soft grey shining dress and the delicate golden hair vanished from the silver room into the bronze. The two men left alone together exchanged a long, challenging look. Jean did not feel particularly attracted towards his companion. Louis Flaubert looked a little like a round birthday-cake with too much pink icing on the top.
“Madame is always gay! always gay!” Flaubert said after a moment’s pause. “Maintenant, Monsieur, parlons de vos affaires; elles vous sourient en ce moment.”
Jean sat down and listened attentively to what Flaubert put before him. It appeared that Torialli’s connection was enormous and his every hour pressed to overflowing. He could only take the best and most important of the pupils who applied to him.
“The best from the point of view of art,” Flaubert explained. “That you will find is the great point here, Monsieur; we make nothing of success or of material value here! We are, as it were, in a world beyond all that—but for art to preserve its purity we slave! I have had myself to take many of the pupils of Torialli—I am over-weighted with work; of course, I have the advantage that I know the system. Yes, I may say that for myself the system has become a part ofme—and I have almost become a part of the system. I refer, of course, to the production of the voice; it is what we refer to chiefly here. You will find yourself in a positive factory for the human voice in all its stages and conditions. For a young man with musical talents and a career to make, I think, I don’t say lightly, that the advantages are simply inestimable. There is much of the work, however, which is not purely technical. You will find out all that later—appointments to make—business letters to write—concerts to arrange for—all these things will be invaluable for your future experience. They will introduce you to the necessary workings of public life. You will, of course, accompany regularly my pupils, and from time to time when I am unavoidably detained about the management of affairs—and I must tell you this often happens, for Torialli is, like Madame, an artist pure and simple—you will, of course, hold yourself in readiness to accompany for him. What you will learn then, I need not say, is an opportunity many men in Paris would give their heads for!”
Jean gratefully acknowledged the splendour of his future, and felt that after this it would seem ungrateful and even grasping on his part to press for a salary. Still he had to live, and one cannot live on the magnificence of future prospects alone. He suggested hesitatingly to Louis that there was this difficulty.
“We will come to all that,” said Flaubert alittle impatiently. “Many men would pay to have the opportunity that is before you, but I understand from Cartier that your circumstances—?”
Jean blushed hotly. Somehow he hated to talk to this man about his circumstances.
“I am very poor indeed,” he said coldly. Louis looked slightly incredulous, but rubbed his hands together more than ever.
“Well! well! we shall remedy all that!” he said. “Your hours will be from nine to six o’clock, Monsieur, at my house, you know; a truly unpretentious place close by, Number 34; and the evenings you have entirely to yourself—you can therefore earn as much as you like during your free time. We do not seek to bind you in any way. Of course, you quite understand that nothing must ever be said about the system? Of that we must be as careful as if it was a secret of the confessional. From now you are one of us. You agree to this, I hope?”
“Oh yes, certainly,” said Jean.
“Then,” said Louis Flaubert, rising, “I think that is all. Ah yes! I forgot the point, like Madame. Of course, there is your salary. Shall we begin with four hundred francs a month? I take it that is agreeable to you, is it not?”
Jean stammered that it was—he wanted to ask for an advance, but he had not the courage; and the fat little man did not give him time to acquire it. He shook hands with him violently, tellinghim to appear at nine o’clock next morning, and was out of the room and down the stairs before Jean had time to formulate a thought, far less express it. He followed the fat little whirlwind into the street at length with a dizzy head. The future was before him and the whole of Paris sang. It seemed to Jean that the sunset sky was grey and silver with a band of gold, and as if to-morrow Jean would find himself playing before kings—music that was made up of silver laughter, of gentle wisdom, and of the wistful mystery that guards the heart of a child!
It was some hours later, when the sunset had faded, and Jean had eaten a small and sober supper in a peculiarly dingy room which he took for himself in the Rue Lalo, that it occurred to him to reflect he was after all not going to be Torialli’saccompagnateur, but the private secretary of Torialli’saccompagnateurat a ridiculously small salary.
He took out Madame Torialli’s letter and read it again. There was certainly a slight mistake somewhere; the faint scent of violets crept out into the dingy little room. Jean closed his eyes and smiled. Madame Torialli had no head for business. But after all what did it matter? The scent of the violets seemed to have replaced the moment’s chill lucidity of doubt. The past was a phantom, the present was a bridge, and the future had all the invincible fragrance of a dream.
It was evening in Paris and the spring was in the air. Jean ran downstairs headlong to become a part of the laughter and movement of the streets.
He was glad when he remembered that he had not given Margot his new address. She had been out when he called to fetch his luggage and tell her of his change of plans. She would have asked for explanations, and there is a time when no man likes to explain.