The pretender: A story of the Latin Quarter

It is Little Thing singing as she sits by the poppy patch before the door. There are hundreds of poppies. They dance in gleeful glory and their scarlet is so luminous it seems about to burst into flame. Maybe the shell-pink in the girl’s cheeks is a reflexion of that radiant glow.

The coast of Brittany dimples as it smiles, and in its most charming dimple is tucked away our little village. The sea has all the glitter of crushed gems. It sparkles in amethyst and emerald; it glooms to garnet and sardonyx. There is a bow of golden sand, and the hill-side is ablaze with yellow brown.

“Dreamhaven” I call our house, and it stands between the poppies and the pines. A house of Breton granite, built to suffice a score of generations, it glimmers like some silvery grand-dame, and its roof is velvety with orange-coloured moss.

We have been here three weeks and Anastasia has responded wonderfully to the change. Nothing can exceed her delight. She sings all day, rivalling the merle that wakes us every morning with his flute-like run of melody.

She loves to sit in a corner of the old garden where a fig tree climbs the silvery wall. There she will knit tranquilly and watch the little lizards flicker over the sun-warmed stone, then pause with panting sides and bead-like eyes to peer around. But for me, I prefer the scented gloom of the pine coppice beyond the garden. Dearly do I love the sudden solitude of pines.

I have corrected the proofs of Tom, Dick and Harry there. I am relieved to find the story goes with vim. It is as light as a biscuit, and as easy of mental digestion. I have sent off the last batch of proofs; my part is done; the rest is Fate.

Now I turn to my jolly Bretons, so dirty and devout, so toilworn and so tranquil. My old women have the bright, clear eyes of children. Never have they worn hat or shoes, never left their native heaths. Yet they are happy—because it has never struck them that they are not happy.

My young women all want to marry sailors so that they may be left at home in tranquillity. They do not desire to see over-much of their lords and masters, who I fear, are fond of mixing eau-de-vie with their cider. If they go to live in cities they generally die of consumption. Their costume is hauntingly Elizabethan, and they are three hundred years behind the times.

About a week ago I had a curious conversation with Anastasia.

“Little Thing,” I began, “do you know that if I like I can go away and marry some other French girl?”

“What do you mean?” she said, somewhat startled.

“I mean that as far as France is concerned our marriage doesn’t hold.”

“Mon Dieu!”

“It’s all right by English law, but French law doesn’t recognise it.”

“How droll! But what does it matter? You don’t want marry other French girls?”

“No, but it’s interesting to know that one can.”

“But me, too. Have I not right to marry some other persons?”

“Hum! I never thought of that.”

“Another thing,” I continued, “under French law man and wife hold property in common. Now, supposing you came into fortune, I couldn’t touch it.”

“Ah! now you speak for laughing. I nevaire come into fortune.”

“Well, suppose I come into a fortune—but then that’s equally absurd; anyway, I just wanted to point out to you that by a curious vagary of the law we could repudiate our marriage and contract others—in France.”

Anastasia looked very thoughtful. Though I had spoken jestingly I might have known that with her serious imagination she would take it gravely. Surely enough, a few days after she brought up the subject.

“I sink I like very much, darleen, if we get marry once more, French way, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all; only—I don’t want to make a habit of it.”

“Excuse me, darleen; and please I like it very much if we get marry in Catolick church.”

“All right. We’ll get married in Notre Dame this time.”

“But....” Here she hesitated—“zere is one trouble.”

“Well, what is it?”

“In France it is necessaire by law I have consent of my fazzaire and my muzzaire.”

“Well, seeing that they’re in (we hope) heaven, it won’t be very easy to get it.”

“Oh, no! I nevaire say my muzzaire is dead.”

“But isn’t she?”

“I don’t know. I have not hear of her for many year. I leave wiz my fazzaire when I was leetle girls, before he put me in the couvent. My fazzaire get separation from my muzzaire. She’s very bad womans. She’s beat my fazzaire very cruel, so’s he get separation. My fazzaire was poet.”

“And your mother?”

“Oh, she was not at all chic. She was what we call ‘merchant of the four seasons.’”

“Good heavens! You don’t mean one of those women that hawk stuff in the street with hand barrows?”

Anastasia nodded gravely.

I shuddered. Father a cabaret poet; mother a street pedlar of cabbages and onions. Sacré mud! Then a sudden suspicion curdled my blood.

“Tell me,” I demanded, “is it not that your mother’s name is Séraphine?”

“Yes,” she exclaimed, amazedly.

“And she’s a very big woman with a large nose?”

“Yes, yes; how you know?”

“Well then, let me inform you that your respected parent is at present doing business in a rather flourishing way in the Halles. She imports escargots and wears seven diamond rings on one hand. Judging by that hand alone, there’s a respectable prospect of your becoming an heiress after all.”

“She’s terrible woman,” said Anastasia, after I had explained my meeting with her mother. “I’m afraid she’s make trooble. She’s behave very cruel to my fazzaire and she not like me, because when they separate I choose go wiz heem. She nevaire forgeeve me. I’m ’fraid she’s never consent to our marriage in France.”

“Wait till we get back to Paris and we’ll tackle her.”

“When we go back to Paris?”

“Next week. I can’t afford to rent the house after the end of the month.”

“I’m sorry to go. I love it here.”

“Yes, but I must get back to work again. We must bid our jolly Bretons good-bye.”

We bade them good-bye this morning; great, great grandfather Dagorn herding his cows on the velvety dune; Yyves swinging his scythe as he whisked down the heavy crimson clover; Marie stooped over her churn; Mother Dagorn whose withered cheeks are apple-bright; the rosy-faced children, the leaping dogs. We looked our last on that golden beach, that jewelled sea; we roamed our last amid the hedges of honeysuckle, the cherry-trees snowed with blossom, the stream where the embattled lilies brandished blades and flaunted starry banners. Last of all, and with something very like sadness, we bade good-bye to that old house I called Dreamhaven, which stands between the poppies and the pines.

Back in Paris. The dear sunny boulevards are once more embowered in tender green, and once more I am a dreamy Luxemburger, feeding my Bohemian sparrows in that cool, still grove where gleam the busts of Murger and Verlaine: once more I roam the old streets, seeking the spirit of the past; once more I am the apostle of the clear laugh and the joyous mind.

One of the first persons I met as I walked down the spinal column of the Quarter, the Boul’ Mich’, was Helstern. He had just come from a lecture by Bergson at the Sorbonne and was indignant because he had been obliged to stand near the door.

“Bergson’s a society craze just now. The place was crowded with wretched women that couldn’t understand a word of his lecture. They chattered and stared at one another through their lorgnettes. One wretched cocotte threw the old man a bunch of violets.”

“What did he do?”

“He took it up and after looking at it as if he didn’t know what it was he put it in his pocket.”

“Well, how’s every one? What have you been doing? Some symbolical group, I suppose?”

“No; I’ve decided to go in for simple things, the simpler the better. I’ve done a little head and bust of Solonge I want you to see. I’m rather pleased with it.”

“All right. I’ll come as soon as we get settled.”

“Where are you going this time?”

“I’ve taken a logement on the Passage d’Enfer; you know it—a right-angled street of quaint old houses that runs into the Boulevard Raspail.”

“I know. I once lived in the rue Boissonniere. What are you going to do now?”

“Another novel, I suppose. I have enough money to last me for five months. Just fancy! five months to write and not worry about anything at all. How’s Frosine and the Môme?”

Helstern beamed. Then for the first time I noticed a remarkable change in him. No longer could I call him the “melancholy Dane” (he was really a Swede, by the way). He had discarded his severe black stock for a polka-dot Lavallière, and he was actually wearing a check suit.

“Come with us on Sunday. We are all going to St. Cloud.”

“I’ll ask my wife. Thing’s going all right?”

“Yes, I think she’ll consent to name the day.”

“Well, I congratulate you. And how’s Lorrimer?”

“He seems to have taken up with a new girl, a dark, Italian kind of a type. I’ve seen him with her at the cafés. He’s fickle in his attachments.”

“That must be Lucretia,” I thought; and I congratulated myself on my adroit disentanglement. Then I felt some compunction as I thought of Rougette.

But I was reassured, for I saw the two together that very afternoon in front of the café du Panthéon. Rougette looked sweet and serene. Whatever might have been the philandering of Lorrimer it had not disturbed her Breton phlegm. Or, perhaps it was that in her simple faith she was incapable of believing him a gay deceiver. She was more than ever distractingly pretty, so that, looking at her, I could not imagine how any one could neglect her for the olive-skinned Lucretia.

Lorrimer, too, was the picture of prosperity. He wore a new Norfolk suit, and a wide-brimmed grey hat. He looked more faunesque and insouciant than ever, a being all nerves and energy and indomitable gaiety.

“Hullo,” he greeted me; “here’s old Daredeath Dick. Come and join us. Rougette wants to hear all about her ‘pays Breton.’ You’re looking very fit. How’s everything?”

“Excellent, I’m to have a novel published next week, and I’ve got enough money to follow it up with another.”

“What a wonderful chap you are to be able to spread your money out like that! You know wealth would be my ruin. Poverty’s my best friend. Wealth really worries me. I never could work if I had lots of money. By the way, you must see my picture at the Salon des Independents. Rougette and the Neapolitaine are in it. It’s creating quite a sensation.”

“How is our dark friend?”

He shrugged his shoulders gaily. “Just a little embarrassing at times. She’s awfully jealous of Rougette. The other day in the studio she snatched up a knife, and I thought she was going to stick it into me; but she only proceeded to slash up a picture I had done called The Jolie Bretonne, for which Rougette had posed. After that we had a fuss, and I told her all was over between us. So we parted in wrath, and I haven’t spoken to her since. She has a devil of a temper; a good girl to keep away from.”

Poor unsuspecting Lorrimer! I felt guilty for a moment. Then I changed the subject.

“But you’re looking very spruce. Don’t tell me you’ve sold a picture.”

“No, but I’ve got a job, a steady job. I’m doing cartoons every night at the Noctambules. You must come round and see me.”

I promised I would, and returned to the Passage d’Enfer, where Anastasia was busy putting our new apartment in order. There was a bedroom, dining-room, and a kitchen, about the size of a packing-box; but she was greatly pleased with everything. We supplemented our old furniture with some new articles from the bazaars. A dressing-table of walnut, a wardrobe with mirror doors, and cretonne curtains with a design of little roses. Soon, we found ourselves installed with a degree of comfort we had not hitherto known.

It was one evening that Anastasia, who had been papering the dining-room, retired to bed quite early, that I decided to accept Lorrimer’s invitation and visit the Noctambules. This is a cabaret in a dark side-street that parallels the “Boul’ Mich’.” I found myself in a long, low room whose walls were covered with caricatures of artists who in their Bohemian days had been habitués of the place. There was an array of chairs, a shabby little platform, and a piano. As each chansonnier came on he was introduced by an irrepressible young man with a curly mop of hair and merry eyes. Then, as the singer finished, the volatile young man called for three rounds of hearty applause.

The cabaret chansonniers of Paris are unique in their way. They are a connecting-link between literature and the stage—hermaphrodites of the entertaining world. They write, compose, and sing their own songs, which, often, not only have a distinctive note that makes for art, but are sung inimitably well. Ex-poets, students with a turn for satiric diversion, journalists of Bohemia, all go to swell the ranks of these inheritors of the traditions of Beranger. From that laureate of the gutter, Aristide Bruant, down to the smallest of them, they portray with passionate fidelity the humour and tragedy of the street—irreverently Rabelaisian at one moment, pathetically passionate at the next.

As I enter, Marcel Legay is in the midst of a song of fervid patriotism. In spite of his poetic name, he is a rubicund little man with a voice and the mane of a lion. Then follows Vincent Hispy, with catlike eyes and droll, caustic wit. Then comes Zavier Privas, big and boisterous as the west wind, lover to his soul of the chansons he writes and sings. Finally, with a stick of charcoal and an eager smile, Lorrimer appears. A screen is wheeled up on which are great sheets of coarse paper. The artist announces that his first effort will be Sarah Bernhardt. He makes about five lightning lines, and there is the divine Sarah. Then follow in swift succession Polaire, Dranem, Mistinguette, Mayol, and other lights of the Paris stage.

And now the cartoonist turns to the audience and asks them to name some one high in politics. A voice shouts Clemenceau. In a moment the well-known features are on the board. Poincaré! It is done. And so on for a dozen others. Applause greets every new cartoon, and the artist retires covered with glory.

“How did you like it?” grins Lorrimer, as he joins me in the audience.

“Splendid! Why, man, you could make barrels of money in America doing that sort of thing.”

“I’d rather be a pauper in Paris than a money-changer in Chicago. But there’s Rougette at the back of the hall. Doesn’t she look stunning? Thanks to this job, I’ve been able to pay her for a good many sittings, and now she’s got a new gown and hat. By Jove! that girl will be the making of me yet. Her loveliness really inspires me. Nature leaves me cold, but woman, beautiful woman!—I could go on painting her eternally and not ask for other reward.”

And, indeed, the Breton girl, with her ash-gold hair and her complexion of roses and cream, was a delicate vision of beauty.

“Never let a woman see that you cannot be serenely happy without her,” says Lorrimer. “I’d do anything for Rougette (short of marrying her), yet I never let her know it. And so she’s faithful to me. Others have tried to steal her from me; have offered her luxury; but no, she’s the same devoted, unspoiled girl. Just look at her, Madden, a pure lustrous pearl. Think what a life such a girl might have in this Paris, where men make queens of beautiful women! What triumphs! what glories! Yet there she is, content to follow the fortunes of an obscure painter. But come on and join the girl. They’re going to do a little silhouette drama.”

As we sit by Rougette, who smiles radiantly, the lights go out, and beyond the stage a little curtain goes up, showing a fisher cottage in Brittany. The scene is early morning, the sea flooded with the coral light of dawn. Then across the face of the picture comes the tiny silhouettes of the fishermen carrying their nets. The cottage is next shown in the glow of noon, and, lastly, by night, with the fisher boats passing over the face of the moon.

Then the scene changes. We see the inside of the cabin—the bed, the wardrobe of oak and brass, the great stone fireplace, the ship hanging over it, the old grandmother sitting by her spinning-wheel. To her come the children begging for a story, and she tells them one from out the past—a story of her youth, the rising of the Vendée.

All this is made clear by three singers, who, somewhere in the darkness, tell it in sweet, wild strains of Breton melody. There is a soprano, a tenor, a bass; now one takes up the story, then another; then all three voices blend with beautiful effect. And as they sing we see the tiny silhouettes of the peasants, vivid and clear-cut, passing across the face of the changing scene. Those strong, melodious voices tell of how the farmer-soldiers rose and fought; how they marched in the snow; how they suffered; how they died. It is sad, sweet, beautiful; and now the music grows more dramatic; the action quickens; the climax draws near.

And as I sit there with eyes fixed on that luminous space, I feel that something else, also terrible, is about to happen. Surely some one is moving in the darkness behind us? Even in that black silence I am conscious of a shadow blacker still. Surely I can hear the sound of hard, panting breath? That dreadful breathing passes me, passes Lorrimer, comes to an arrest behind Rougette.

Then I hear a scream, shriek on shriek, such as I never dreamed within the gamut of human agony. And in the hush of panic that follows the lights go up.

Rougette is lying on the floor, her head buried in her arms, uttering heart-rending cries. Lorrimer, with a face of absolute horror, is bending over her, trying to raise her as she grovels there in agony.

What is it? A hundred faces are turned towards us, each the mask of terror and dismay. I will always remember those faces that suddenly flamed at us out of the dark, all so different, yet with the one awful expression.

Then I see a tiny bottle at my feet. Almost mechanically I stoop and pick it up; but I drop it as if I had been stung. I fall to rubbing my fingers in agony, and everywhere I rub there is a brown burn. Now I understand the poor, writhing, twisting girl on the floor, and a similar shudder of understanding seems to convulse the crowd. There comes a hoarse whisper—“Vitriol!”

Turning to the door, I am just in time to see a girl in black make her escape, an olive-skinned girl with beetle-black hair and the eyes of an odalisque. And Lorrimer looks at me in a ghastly way, and I know that he too has seen.