miss thompkins and miss nickall were a charm to dissipate all the affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. miss thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as tommy. miss nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as nick. the age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. the one came from wyoming, the other from arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. they had driven up to the terminus before going to a fancy-dress ball to be given that night in the studio of monsieur dauphin, a famous french painter and a delightful man. they had met monsieur dauphin on the previous evening on the terrace of the café de versailles, and monsieur had said, in response to their suggestion, that he would be enchanted and too much honoured if they would bring their english friends to his little “leaping"—that was, hop.
also they had thought that it would be nice for the travellers to be met at the terminus, especially as miss ingate had been very particularly recommended to miss thompkins by a whole group of people in london. it was miss thompkins who had supplied the address of reliable furnished rooms, and she and nick would personally introduce the ladies to their landlady, who was a sweet creature.
tommy and nick and miss ingate were at once on terms of cordial informality; but the americans seemed to be a little diffident before the companion. their voices, at the introduction, had reinforced the surprise of their first glances. “oh! mrs. moncreiff!” the slightest insistence, no more, on the “mrs."! nothing said, but evidently they had expected somebody else!
then there was the boy, whom they called musa. he was dark, slim, with timorous great eyes, and attired in red as a devil beneath his student’s cloak. he apologised slowly in english for not being able to speak english. he said he was very french, and tommy and nick smiled, and he smiled back at them rather wistfully. when tommy and nick had spoken with the chauffeurs in french he interpreted their remarks. there were two motor-taxis, one for the luggage.
miss thompkins accompanied the luggage; she insisted on doing so. she could tell sinister tales of paris cabmen, and she even delayed the departure in order to explain that once in the suburbs and in the pre-taxi days a cabman had threatened to drive her and himself into the seine unless she would be his bride, and she saved herself by promising to be his bride and telling him that she lived in the avenue de l’opéra; as soon as the cab reached a populous thoroughfare she opened the cab door and squealed and was rescued; she had let the driver go free because of his good taste.
as the procession whizzed through nocturnal streets, some thunderous with traffic, others very quiet, but all lined with lofty regular buildings, audrey was penetrated by the romance of this city where cabmen passionately and to the point of suicide and murder adored their fares. and she thought that perhaps, after all, madame piriac’s impression of paris might not be entirely misleading. miss ingate and nick talked easily, very charmed with one another, both excited. audrey said little, and the dark youth said nothing. but once the dark youth murmured shyly to audrey in english:
“do you play at ten-nis, madame?”
they crossed a thoroughfare that twinkled and glittered from end to end with moving sky-signs. serpents pursued burning serpents on the heights of that thoroughfare, invisible hands wrote mystic words of warning and invitation, and blazing kittens played with balls of incandescent wool. throngs of promenaders moved under theatrical trees that waved their pale emerald against the velvet sky, and the ground floor of every edifice was a glowing café, whose tables, full of idle sippers and loungers, bulged out on to the broad pavements.... the momentary vision was shut off instantly as the taxis shot down the mouth of a dark narrow street; but it had been long enough to make audrey’s heart throb.
“what is that?” she asked.
“that?” exclaimed nick kindly. “oh! that’s only the grand boulevard.”
then they crossed the sombre, lamp-reflecting seine, and soon afterwards the two taxis stopped at a vast black door in a very wide street of serried palatial façades that were continually shaken by the rushing tumult of electric cars. tommy jumped out and pushed a button, and the door automatically split in two, disclosing a vast and dim tunnel. tommy ran within, and came out again with a coatless man in a black-and-yellow striped waistcoat and a short white apron. this man, musa, and the two chauffeurs entered swiftly into a complex altercation, which endured until audrey had paid the chauffeurs and all the trunks had been transported behind the immense door and the door bangingly shut.
“vehy amusing, isn’t it?” whispered miss ingate caustically to audrey. “aren’t they dears?”
“madame dubois’s establishment is on the third and fourth floors,” said nick.
they climbed a broad, curving, carpeted staircase.
“we’re here,” said audrey to miss ingate after scores of stairs.
miss ingate, breathless, could only smile.
and audrey profoundly felt that she was in paris. the mere shape of the doorknob by the side of a brass plate lettered “madame dubois” told her that she was in an exotic land.
and in the interior of madame dubois’s establishment tommy and nick together drew apart the curtains, opened the windows, and opened the shutters of a pleasantly stuffy sitting-room. everybody leaned out, and they saw the superb thoroughfare, straight and interminable, and the moving roofs of the tram-cars, and dwarfs on the pavements. the night was mild and languorous.
“you see that!” nick pointed to a blaze of electricity to the left on the opposite side of the road. “that’s where we shall take you to dine, after you’ve spruced yourselves up. you needn’t bother about fancy dress. monsieur dauphin always has stacks of kimonos—for his models, you know.”
while the travellers spruced themselves up in different bedrooms, tommy chattered through one pair of double doors ajar, and nick through the other, and musa strummed with many mistakes on an antique pleyel piano. and as audrey listened to the talk of these acquaintances, tommy and nick, who in half an hour had put on the hue of her lifelong friends, and as she heard the piano, and felt the vibration of cars far beneath, she decided that she was still growing happier and happier, and that life and the world were marvellous.
a little later they passed into the café-restaurant through a throng of seated sippers who were spread around its portals like a defence. the interior, low, and stretching backwards, apparently endless, into the bowels of the building, was swimming in the brightest light. at a raised semicircular counter in the centre two women were enthroned, plump, sedate, darkly dressed, and of middle age. to these priestesses came a constant succession of waiters, in the classic garb of waiters, bearing trays which they offered to the gaze of the women, and afterwards throwing down coins that rang on the marble of the counter. one of the women wrote swiftly in a great tome. both of them, while performing their duties, glanced continually into every part of the establishment, watching especially each departure and each arrival.
at scores of tables were the most heterogeneous collection of people that audrey had ever seen; men and women, girls and old men, even a few children with their mothers. liquids were of every colour, ices chromatic, and the scarlet of lobster made a luscious contrast with the shaded tints of salads. in the extreme background men were playing billiards at three tables. though nearly everybody was talking, no one talked loudly, so that the resulting monotone of conversation was a gentle drone, out of which shot up at intervals the crash of crockery or a hoarse command. and this drone combined itself with the glittering light, and with the mild warmth that floated in waves through the open windows, and with the red plush of the seats, and with the rosiness of painted nymphs on the blue walls, and with the complexions of women’s faces, and their hats and frocks, and with the hues of the liquids—to produce a totality of impression that made audrey dizzy with ecstasy. this was not the paris set forth by madame piriac, but it was a wondrous paris, and in audrey’s esteem not far removed from heaven.
miss ingate, magnificently pale, followed tommy and nick with ironic delight up the long passage between the tables. her eyes seemed to be saying: “i am overpowered, and yet there is something in me that is not overpowered, and by virtue of my kind-hearted derision i, from essex, am superior to you all!” audrey, with glance downcast, followed miss ingate, and musa came last, sinuously. nobody looked up at them more than casually, but at intervals during the passage tommy and nick nodded and smiled: “how d’ye do? how d’ye do?” “bon soir,“ and answers were given in american or french voices.
they came to rest near the billiard tables, and near an aperture with a shelf where all the waiters congregated to shout their orders. a grey-haired waiter, with the rapidity and dexterity of a conjurer, laid a cloth over the marble round which they sat, audrey and miss ingate on the plush bench, and tommy and nick, with musa between them, on chairs opposite. the waiter then discussed with them for five minutes what they should eat, and he argued the problem seriously, wisely, helpfully, as befitted. it was audrey, in full view of a buffet laden with shell-fish and fruit, who first suggested lobster, and lobster was chosen, nothing but lobster. miss ingate said that she was not a bit tired, and that lobster was her dream. the sentiment was universal at the table. when asked what she would drink, audrey was on the point of answering “lemonade.” but a doubt about the propriety of everlasting lemonade for a widow with much knowledge of the world, stopped her.
“i vote we all have grenadines,” said nick.
grenadine was agreeable to audrey’s ear, and everyone concurred.
the ordering was always summarised and explained by musa in a few phrases which, to audrey, sounded very different from the french of tommy and nick. and she took oath that she would instantly begin to learn to speak french, not like tommy and nick, whose accent she cruelly despised, but like musa.
then tommy and nick removed their cloaks, and sat displayed as a geisha and a contadina, respectively. musa had already unmasked his devilry. the café was not in the least disturbed by these gorgeous and strange apparitions. an orchestra began to play. lobster arrived, and high glasses full of glinting green. audrey ate and drank with gusto, with innocence, with the intensest love of life. and she was the most beautiful and touching sight in the café-restaurant. miss ingate, grinning, caught her eye with joyous mockery. “we are going it, aren’t we, audrey?” shrieked miss ingate.
miss thompkins and miss nickall began slowly to differentiate themselves in audrey’s mind. at first they were merely two american girls—the first audrey had met. they were of about the same age—whatever that age might be—and if they were not exactly of the same age, then tommy with red hair was older than nick with grey hair. indeed, nick took the earliest opportunity to remark that her hair had turned grey at nineteen. they both had dreamy eyes that looked through instead of looking at; they were both hazy concerning matters of fact; they were both attached like a couple of aunts to musa, who nestled between them like a cat between two cushions; they were both extraordinarily friendly and hospitable; they both painted and both had studios—in the same house; they both showed quite a remarkable admiration and esteem for all their acquaintances; and they both lacked interest in their complexions and their hair.
the resemblance did not go very much farther. tommy, for all her praising of friends, was of a critical, curious, and analytical disposition, and her greenish eyes were always at work qualifying in a very subtle manner what her tongue said, when her tongue was benevolent, as it often was. feminism and suffragism being the tie between the new acquaintances, these subjects were the first material of conversation, and an empress of militancy known to the world as “rosamund” having been mentioned, miss ingate said with enthusiasm:
“she lives only for one thing.”
“yes,” replied tommy. “and if she got it, i guess no one would be more disgusted than she herself.”
there was an instant’s silence.
“oh, tommy!” nick lovingly protested.
said miss ingate with a comprehending satiric grin:
“i see what you mean. i quite see. i quite see. you’re right, miss thompkins. i’m sure you’re right.”
audrey decided she would have to be very clever in order to be equal to tommy’s subtlety. nick, on the other hand, was not a bit subtle, except when she tried to imitate tommy. nick was kindness, and sympathy, and vagueness. you could see these admirable qualities in every curve of her face and gleam of her eyes. she was very sympathetic, but somewhat shocked when audrey blurted out that she had not come to paris in order to paint.
“there are at least fifty painters in this café this very minute,” said tommy. and somehow it was just as if she had said: “if you haven’t come to paris to paint, what have you come for?”
“does mr. musa paint, too?” asked audrey.
“oh no!” both his protectresses answered together, pained. tommy added: “musa plays the violin—of course.”
and musa blushed. later, he murmured to audrey across the table, while tommy was ordering a salad, that there were tennis courts in the luxembourg gardens.
“i used to paint,” miss ingate broke out. “and i’m beginning to think i should like to paint again.”
said nick, enraptured:
“i’ll let you use my studio, if you will. i’d just love you to, now! where did you study?”
“well, it was like this,” said miss ingate with satisfaction. “it was a long time ago. i finished painting a dog-kennel because the house-painter’s wife died and he had to go to her funeral, and the dog didn’t like being kept waiting. that gave me the idea. i went into water-colours, but afterwards i went back to oils. oils seemed more real. then i started on portraits, and i did a portrait of my aunt sarah from memory. after she saw it she tore up her will, and before i could get her into a good temper again she married her third husband and she had to make a new will in favour of him. so i found painting very expensive. not that it would have made any difference, i suppose, would it? after that i went into miniatures. the same dog that i painted the kennel for ate up the best miniature i ever did. it killed him. i put a cross over his grave in the garden. all that made me see what a fool i’d been, and i exchanged my painting things for a lawn-mower, but it never turned out to be any good.”
“you dear! you precious! you priceless!” cooed nick. “i shall fix up my second best easel for you to-morrow.”
“isn’t she just too lovely!” tommy murmured aside to audrey.
“i not much understand,” said musa.
tommy translated to him, haltingly, and audrey was moved to say, with energy:
“what i want most is to learn french, and i’m going to begin to-morrow morning.”
nick was kindly confusing and shaming miss ingate with a short history and catechism of modern art, including such names as vuillard, bonnard, picasso, signac, and matisse—all very eagerly poured out and all very unnerving for miss ingate, whose directory of painting was practically limited to the names of raphael, sir joshua, rembrandt, rubens, gainsborough, turner, leighton, millais, gustave doré and frank dicksee. when, however, nick referred to monsieur dauphin, miss ingate was as it were washed safely ashore and said with assurance: “oh yes! oh yes! oh yes!”
tommy listened for a few moments, and then, leaning across the table and lighting a cigarette, she said in an intimate undertone to audrey: “i hope you don’t mind coming to the ball to-night. we really didn’t know———” she stopped. her eyes, ferreting in audrey’s black, completed the communication.
unnerved for the tenth of a second, audrey recovered and answered:
“oh, no! i shall like it very much.”
“you’ve been up against life!” murmured tommy in a melting voice, gazing at her. “but how wonderful all experience is, isn’t it. i once had a husband. we separated—at least, he separated. but i know the feel of being a wife.”
audrey blushed deeply. she wanted to push away all that sympathy, and she was exceedingly alarmed by the revelation that tommy was an initiate. the widow was the merest schoolgirl once more. but her blush had saved her from a chat in which she could not conceivably have held her own.
“excuse me being so clumsy,” said tommy contritely. “another time.” and she waved her cigarette to the waiter in demand for the bill.
it was after the orchestra had finished a tango, and while tommy was examining the bill, that the first violin and leader, in a magenta coat, approached the table, and with a bow offered his violin deferentially to musa. many heads turned to watch what would happen. but musa only shrugged his shoulders and with an exquisite gesture of refusal signified that he had to leave. whereupon the magenta coat gracefully retired, starting a hungarian dance as he went.
“musa is supposed to be the greatest violinist in paris—perhaps in the world,” tommy whispered casually to audrey. “he used to play here, till dauphin discovered him.”
audrey, overcome by this prodigious blow, trembled at the contemplation of her blind stupidity.
beyond question, musa now looked extremely important, vivid, masterful. she had been mistaking him for a nice, ornamental, useless boy.
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