CHAPTER V
THE CITY OF LOVE
This morning in the course of my walk I was passing Cook’s corner in the Place de l’Opera, when I was accosted from behind by an alcoholic voice:
“Want to see the Crystal Palace to-day, sir?”
Now the Crystal Palace is one of these traps for the stranger with which Paris is baited. Your Parisian knows these places as part of the city’s life which is not there for the Frenchman but for the tourist and stranger. These people look for these things as a part of the life of Paris, your Parisian says, and in consequence they are there.
I was going on, then, when something familiar in the voice made me turn sharply. Lo and behold!—O’Flather.
“Hullo, Professor!” I said, with a grin. “Gone out of the flea-taming business?”
For a moment he stared at me.
“Hullo! young man. Yep. Met with a dirty deal. One of my helpers doped the troupe. Them as wasn’t stiff and cold was no more good for work. Busted me up.”
“Too bad. What are you doing now?”
“Working as a guide.”
“But you don’t know Paris!”
“’Tain’t necessary. Mighty few Paris guides know Paris. Don’t have to.”
“Well, I wish you luck,” I said, and left him. He looked after me curiously. His eyes were bloodshot from excessive drinking, and his dewlaps were blotched and sagging. “Vindictive brute!” I thought. “If he only knew wouldn’t he be mad! What a ripping villain he’d make if this was only fiction instead of real life!”
It was this morning, too, I made the acquaintance of Frosine. Passing through the mildewed court I saw peering through the window of a basement room the wistful face of little Solonge. Against the dark interior her head of silky gold was like that of a cherub painted on a panel. Struck with a sudden idea, I knocked at their door.
Solonge opened it, turning the handle, after several attempts, with both hands, and very proud of the feat. She welcomed me shyly, and a clear voice invited me to enter. If the appearance of the child had formerly surprised me, I was still more astonished when I saw the mother. She was almost as dark as the little one was fair. The contrast was so extreme that one almost doubted their relationship.
Scarcely did she pause in her work as I entered. She seemed, indeed, a human sewing machine. With lightning quickness she fed the material to the point of her needle, and every time she drew it through a score of stitches would be made. Already the bed was heaped with work she had finished, and a small table was also piled with stuff. A wardrobe, a stove, and two chairs completed the furniture of the room.
But if I felt inclined to pity Frosine the feeling vanished on looking into her face. It was so brave, so frank, so cheerful. There was no beauty, but a piquant quality that almost made up for its lack. Character, variety, appeal she had, and a peculiar fascinating quality of redemption. Thus the beautiful teeth redeemed the rather large mouth; the wide-set hazel eyes redeemed the short, irregular nose; the broad well-shaped brow redeemed the somewhat soft chin. Her skin was of a fine delicacy, one of those skins that seem to be too tightly stretched; and constant smiling had made fine wrinkles round her mouth and eyes.
“A female with an active sense of humour,” I thought. Anastasia’s sense of humour was passive, Rougette’s somewhat atrophied. So Mademoiselle Frosine smiled, and her smile was irresistible. It brought into play all these fine wrinkles; it was so whole-hearted, so free from reservations. That tonic smile would have made a pessimist burn his Schopenhauer, and take to reading Elbert Hubbard.
“Mademoiselle,” I began in my fumbling French, “I have come to beg a favour of you. You would be a thousand times amiable if you could spare Solonge for an hour or two in the afternoon, to go with us to the Luxembourg Gardens. There she may play in the sunshine, and it will give my wife infinite gladness to watch her.”
Frosine almost dropped her needle with pleasure. “Oh, you are so good. It will be such a joy for my little one, and will make me so happy. Madame loves children, does she not?”
“It is truly foolish how she loves them. She will be ravished if you will permit us to have your treasure for a little while.”
“Ah, monsieur, you are entirely too amiable.”
“Not at all. It is well heard, then?”
“But, yes, certainly. You make me too happy.”
“Ah, well! this afternoon at three o’clock?”
“At three o’clock.”
So I broke the news to Anastasia. “Little Thing, I’ve borrowed a baby for you this afternoon. Solonge is coming with us to the gardens.”
(Really, if I had given her a new hat she could not have been more enchanted.)
“Oh, that will be lovely! Then will I have my two childrens with me. You don’t know how I am glad.”
So we gaily descended the timeworn stairs, and found the youngster eagerly awaiting us. In her navy blue coat and hat her wealth of long hair looked fairer and silkier than ever. For a child of four and a half she was very tall and graceful. Then we bade the mother au revoir, and with the youngster chattering excitedly as she held the hand of Anastasia, and me puffing at the cheap briar I had bought in the place of the ill-fated meerschaum, we started out.
“I suppose if it hadn’t been for Solonge,” I observed, “Frosine would have thrown up the sponge long ago. How awful to be alone day after day, sewing against time, so to speak; and that for all one’s life!”
“Oh, no. There is many girl like that in Paris. They work till they die. They are brought up in the couvent. That make them very serious.”
Anastasia had certainly the deepest faith in her religion.
After its long winter relâche the glorious old garden was awakening to the symphony of Spring. The soft breeze that stirred the opening buds came to us laden with fragrance, arousing that so exquisite feeling of sweet confused memory that only the Spring-birth can evoke. The basin of the Fontaine de Médicis was stained a delicate green by peeping leaves, and a flock of fat sparrows with fluttering feathers and joyous cries were making much ado. We sat down on one of the stone benches, because the pennies for the chairs might buy many needful things.
That dear, dear garden of the Luxembourg, what, I wonder, is the secret of its charm? Is it that it is haunted by the sentiment and romance of ages dead and forgotten? Beautiful it is, yet other gardens are also beautiful, and—oh, how different! Surely it should be sacred, sacred to children, artists and lovers. There, under the green and laughing leaf, where statues glimmer in marble or gloom in bronze, and the fountain throws to the tender sky its exquisite aigrette of gold—there the children play, the artists dream, and the lovers exchange sweet kisses. Oh, Mimi and Musette, where the bust of Murger lies buried in the verdure, listening to the protestations of your Eugene and Marcel!—do you not dream that in this self-same spot your mothers in their hours listened to the voice of love, nay, even their mothers in their hours. So over succeeding generations will the old garden cast its spell, and under the branches of the old trees lovers in days to come will whisper their vows. Yea, I think it is haunted, that dear, dear garden of the Luxembourg.
Solonge, whom I had decided to call “The Môme,” had a top which she kept going with a little whip. To start it she would wind the lash of the whip around its point, then standing it upright in the soft ground, give it a sharp jerk. But after a little she tired of this, and began to ask questions about fairies. Never have I seen a child so imaginative. Her world is peopled with fairies, with whom she holds constant communion. There are tree fairies, water fairies, fairies that live in the ground, fairies that lurk in the flowers—she can tell you all about them. Her faith in them is touching, and brutal would he be who tried to shatter it.
“You that make so many stories,” said Anastasia, as she listened to the prattle of the Môme, “have you no stories for children? Can you not make one for little Solonge?”
“Yes, of course, I might; but you will have to put it in French for her.”
“All right. I try.”
So I thought a little, then I began:
Once upon a time there was a little boy who was very much alone and who dreamed greatly. In his father’s garden he had a tiny corner of his own, and in this corner grew a large pumpkin. The boy, who had never seen a pumpkin so big, thought that it might take a prize at the yearly show in the village, and so every day he fed it with milk, and always with the milk of the brindled cow, which was richest of all.
So the pumpkin grew and grew, and the little boy became so wrapt up in it he thought of little else. At last it grew to such a size that other people began to look at it, and say it would surely take a prize. The little boy became more proud of it than ever, and fed it more and more of the milk of the brindled cow, and took to rubbing it till it shone—with his big brother’s silk handkerchief.
Then one night as he lay in bed he heard a great to-do in the garden, and ran out in his night-dress. There was a patch of ground where grew the pumpkins, and another where grew the squashes, and both seemed greatly disturbed. Fearing for his favourite he hurried forward. No, there it was, great and glossy in the moonlight. He kissed it, and even as he did so it seemed as if he heard from within it a tiny, tinny voice calling his name. In surprise he stepped back, and the next moment a door opened in the side of the pumpkin and a fairy stepped forth.
“I am the Pumpkin King,” said the fairy, “and in the name of the Pumpkin People I bid you welcome.”
Then the boy saw that the inside of the great gourd was hollow, and was lit with a wondrous chandelier of glow-worms. It was furnished like a little chamber, with a bed, table, chairs—such a room as you may see in a house for dolls. The boy wished greatly that he might enter, and even as he wished he found that he had grown very small, as small, indeed, as his own finger.
“Will you not enter?” asked the King with a smile of welcome.
So the boy and the King became great friends, and each night when every one else was a-bed he would steal forth and sit in the chamber of the Pumpkin King. The King thanked him for his care of the royal residence, and told him many things of the vegetable world. But chiefly he talked of the endless feud between the pumpkins and their hereditary enemies, the squashes. Whenever the two came together there was warfare, and when the squashes were more numerous the pumpkins were often defeated. Yonder by the gate dwelt the Squash King, a terrible fellow, of whom the Pumpkin King lived in fear.
“Can I not kill him for you?” said the little boy.
“No, no,” answered the King. “No mortal can destroy a fairy. Things must take their course.”
At this the little boy was very sad, and began to dread all kinds of dangers for his friend the King. Then one day he was taken ill with a cold, and the window was closed at night so that he could not steal out as usual. And as he lay tossing in his bed he heard a great noise in the garden. At once he knew that a terrible battle was raging between the squash and the pumpkin tribes. Alas! he could do nothing to help his friends, so he cried bitterly.
And next morning his father came to his bedside and told him that all the pumpkins had been destroyed, including his big one.
“It was that breechy brindled cow,” said the father. “It must have broken into the garden in the night.”
But the little boy knew better.
As I finished a deep, strongly vibrating voice greeted us.
“What a pretty domestic scene. Didn’t know you had a youngster, Madden. Must congratulate you.”
Looking up I saw Helstern. He was leaning on a stout stick, carved like a gargoyle. All in black, with that mane of iron-grey hair and his keen, stern face he made quite a striking figure. There is something unconsciously dramatic about Helstern; I, on the other hand, am consciously dramatic; while Lorrimer is absolutely natural.
“Sorry,” I said, “she doesn’t belong to us. We’ve just borrowed her for the afternoon.”
“I see. What a beautiful type! English, I should imagine?”
“No, that’s what makes her so different—French.”
He looked at her as if fascinated.
“I’d like awfully to make a sketch of her, if you can get her to stand still.”
At that moment there was no difficulty, for the Môme was gazing in round-eyed awe at the ferocious Turk’s head pipe in the sculptor’s mouth. So Helstern took a chair, whipped out his sketch-book, and before the fascinated child could recover he had completed a graceful little sketch.
“Splendid!” I said.
Anastasia, too, was enthusiastic; but when the Môme, who was now nestling in her arms, saw it she uttered a scream of delight.
“If you just sit still a little,” said Helstern eagerly, “while I do another one for myself, I’ll give you this one to take home to your mother.”
The Môme was very timid; but we posed her sitting on the end of the stone seat, with one slim leg bent under her and the other dangling down, while she scattered some crumbs for the fat sparrows at her feet. Against the background of a lilac bush she made a charming picture, and Helstern worked with an enthusiasm that made his eyes gleam, and his stern face relax. This time he used a fine pencil of sepia tint, working with the broad of it so as to get soft effects of shadow. True, he idealised almost beyond resemblance; but what a delicate, graceful picture he made!
“It isn’t such a good likeness as the first one,” I remarked, after I had murmured my admiration.
“Ah!” he said, with the pitying superiority of the artist. “But you don’t see her as I see her.”
There, I thought, is Art in a nutshell; the individual vision, the divination of the soul of things, hidden inexorably from the common eye. To see differently; a greener colour in the grass, a deeper blue in the sky, a madonna in a woman of the street, an angel in a child, God in all things—oh, enchanted Vision! they who have thee should be happier than kings.
“There, little one!” said the sculptor, giving her the first sketch; “take that to your mother and say I said she should be very proud of you. Heavens, I wish I could do a clay figure of her. I wish—”
He looked at her in a sort of ecstasy, sighed deeply, then stumped away looking very thoughtful.
“Is he not distinguished,” I said, “in spite of that foot of his?”
“Ah! that is so sad, I sink. But perhaps it is for the best he have foot like that. It make him more serious; it make him great artist.”
Trust Anastasia to find some compensation in all misfortune!
Frosine was plying that lightning needle when we returned. She looked up joyfully as the little one rushed to her with the sketch.
“Who did this? It is my little pigeon—truly, it is her very self.”
“It was a friend of ours,” said Anastasia, “who is a great sculptor, or, at least, who is going to be. He has fallen in love with your daughter, as indeed we all have.”
“Oh, it is so good of you to take her out. Already I see a difference in her. I would not have her grow up like the children of the streets, and it is so hard when one is poor and has to work every moment of one’s time. As for this picture, thank the Monsieur. Say I will treasure it.”
We promised to do so, and left her singing gaily by the open window as she resumed her everlasting toil.
So it has come about that nearly every afternoon we sit in the Luxembourg enjoying the mellow sunshine, with the little girl playing around us. We know many people by sight, for the same ones come day after day. There by the terrace of the Queens we watch the toy yachts careening in the basin, the boys playing diabolo, the sauntering students with their sweethearts. Anastasia works industriously on some Spanish embroidery, I read for the twentieth time one of my manuscripts, while the Môme leaps and laughs as she keeps a shuttlecock bounding in the air. Her eyes are very bright now, and her delicate cheeks have a rosy stain. Then, when over the great trees the Western sky is aglow, when the fountain turns to flame, and a charmed light lingers in the groves, slowly we go home. Days of grateful memory, for in them do I come to divine the deepest soul of Paris, that which is Youth and Love.