Of Time and the River (114 page)

Often they would eat at little places, which were not very expensive and which Elinor also knew about. She knew about everything: there was nothing about Paris she did not know. Elinor did the talking, rattling off her French like a native—or, anyway, like a native of Boston who speaks French well—trippingly off the tongue, getting the same intonations and gestures the French got, when she argued with them, saying:

“Mais non—mais non mais non mais non mais non mais non!” so rapidly that we could hardly follow her, and she could say: “Oui. C’est ça!—Mais parfaitement
. . . Formidable!” etc., in the same way as a Frenchman could.

Yet there was a trace of gaiety and humour in everything she said and did. She had “the light touch” about everything, and understood just how it was with the French. Her attitude toward them was very much the manner of a mature and sophisticated person with a race of clamouring children. She never grew tired of observing and pointing out their quaint and curious ways: if the jolly proprietor of a restaurant came to the table and proudly tried to speak to them his garbled English, she would shake her head sharply, with a little smile, biting her lower lip as she did so, and saying with a light and tender humour:

“Oh, NICE! . . . He wants to speak his English! . . . ISN’T he a dear? . . . No, no,” she would say quickly if anyone attempted to answer him in French. “Please let him go ahead—poor dear! He’s so proud of it!”

And again she would shake her head, biting her lower lip, with a tender, wondering little smile, as she said so, and “Yes!” Francis would say enthusiastically and with a look of direct, serious, and almost sorrowful earnestness. “And how GRAND the man is about it— how SIMPLE and GRAND in the way he does it! . . . Did you notice the way he used his hand?—I mean like someone in a painting by Cimabue—it really is, you know,” he said earnestly. “The centuries of living and tradition that have gone into a single gesture—and he’s quite unconscious of it. It’s grand—I mean like someone in a painting by Cimabue—it really is, you know,” he said with the sad, serious look of utter earnestness. “It’s really QUITE incredible.”

“Quite,” said Elinor, who with a whimsical little smile had been looking at a waiter with sprouting moustaches, as he bent with prayerful reverence, stirring the ingredients in a salad bowl—“Oh, Francis, darling, look—” she whispered, nodding toward the man. “Don’t you LOVE it? . . . Don’t you simply ADORE the way they do it? . . . I MEAN, you know! Now where? Where?” she cried, with a gesture of complete surrender—”WHERE could you find anything like that in America? . . . I mean, you simply couldn’t find it—that’s all.”

“QUITE!” said Francis concisely. And turning to Eugene, he would say with that impressive air of absolute sad earnestness, “And it’s really MOST important. It really is, you know. It’s astonishing to see what they can put into a single gesture. I mean—the Whole Thing’s there. It really is.”

“Francis!” Elinor would say, looking at him with her gay and tender little smile, and biting her lip as she did so—“You KID, you! I MEAN!—”

Suddenly she put her hand strongly before her eyes, bent her head, and was rigid in a moment of powerful and secret emotion. In a moment, however, she would look up, wet-eyed, suddenly thrust her arm across the table at Eugene, and putting her hand on his arm with a slight gallant movement, say quietly:

“O, I’m sorry—you poor child! . . . After all, there’s no reason why you should have to go through all this. . . . I mean, darling,” she explained gently, “I have an adorable kid at home just four years old—sometimes something happens to make me think of him—you understand, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good,” she said briskly and decisively, with a swift and gallant smile, as she patted his arm again. “I knew you would!”

She had left her husband and child in Boston, she had come here to join Francis, fatality was in the air, but she was always brave and gallant about it. As Francis would say to Eugene as they sat drinking alone in a café:

“It’s MAD—Boston! . . . Perfectly MAD—Boston! . . . I mean, the kind of thing they do when they ride a horse up the steps of the State House. . . . I mean, perfectly GRAND, you know,” he cried with high enthusiasm. “They stop at nothing. It’s simply SWELL— it really is, you know.”

Everyone was being very brave and gallant and stopping at nothing, and the French were charming, charming, and Paris gave them just the background that they needed. It was a fine life.

Elinor took charge of everything. She took charge of the money, the making of plans, the driving of bargains with avaricious and shrewd-witted Frenchmen, and the ordering of food in restaurants.

“It’s really astonishing, you know,” said Starwick—“the way she walks in everywhere and has the whole place at her feet in four minutes. . . . Really, Gene, you should have been with us this afternoon when she made arrangements with the man at the motor agency in the Champs-Elysées for renting the car. . . . Really, I felt quite sorry for him before the thing was over. . . . He kept casting those knowing and rather BITTER glances of reproach at me,” said Starwick, with his burble of soft laughter, “as if he thought I had betrayed him by not coming to his assistance. . . . There was something VERY cruel about it . . . like a great cat playing with a mouse . . . there really was, you know,” said Starwick earnestly. “She can be completely without pity when she gets that way,” he added. “She really can, you know . . . which makes it all the more astonishing—I mean, when you consider what she really is— the way she let me go to sleep on her shoulder the night we were coming back from Rheims, and I was so horribly drunk and got so disgustingly sick,” he said with a simple, touching earnestness. “I mean, the COMPASSION of it—it was QUITE like that Chinese goddess of the Infinite Compassion they have in Boston—it REALLY was, you know. It’s quite astonishing,” he said earnestly, “when you consider her background, the kind of people that she came from— it really IS, you know . . . she’s a grand person, simply terrific . . . it’s utterly MAD—Boston . . . it really is.”

Certainly it was very pleasant to be in the hands of such a captain. Elinor got things done with a beautiful, serene assurance that made everything seem easy. There was no difficulty of custom or language, no weird mystery and complication of traffic, trade, and commerce, so maddening and incomprehensible to most Americans, that Elinor did not understand perfectly. Sometimes she would just shake her head and bite her lip, smiling. Sometimes she would laugh with rich astonishment, and say: “PERFECTLY insane, of course—but then, that’s the way the poor dears are, and you can’t change them. . . . I KNOW! I KNOW! . . . It’s quite incredible, but they’ll ALWAYS be that way, and we’ve simply got to make the best of it.”

She was a heavily built woman about thirty years old who seemed older than she was. She dressed very plainly and wore a rather old hat with a cockade, which gave her a look of eighteenth-century gallantry. And the impression of maturity was increased by her heavy and unyouthful figure, and the strong authority of her face which, in spite of her good-humoured, gay, and whimsical smile, her light Bostonian air of raillery, indicated the controlled tension and restraint of nerves of a person of stubborn and resolute will who is resolved always to act with aristocratic grace and courage.

In spite of her heavy figure, her rough and rather unhealthy- looking skin, she was a distinguished-looking woman, and in her smile, her tone, her play of wit, and even in the swift spitefulness and violence which could flash out and strike and be gone before its victim had a chance to retort or defend himself, she was thoroughly feminine. And yet the woman made no appeal at all to sensual desire: although she had left her husband and child to follow Starwick to France, and was thought by her own family to have become his mistress, it was impossible to imagine her in such a rôle. And for this reason, perhaps, there was something ugly, dark, and sinister in their relation, which Eugene felt strongly but could not define. He felt that Elinor was lacking in the attraction or desire of the sensual woman as Starwick seemed to be lacking in the lust of the sensual man, and there was therefore something in their relation that came from the dark, the murky swamp-fires of emotion, something poisonous, perverse and evil, and full of death.

Just the same, it was fine to be with Elinor when she was gay and deft and charming, and enormously assured, and taking charge of things. At these times everything in life seemed simple, smooth, and easy; there were no dreary complications, the whole world became an enormous oyster ready to be opened, Paris an enormous treasure-hoard of unceasing pleasure and delight. It was good to be with her in a restaurant and to let her do the ordering.

“Now, children,” she would say in her crisp, gay, and yet authoritative tone, staring at the menu with a little frowning smile of studious yet whimsical concentration—“The rest of you can order what you like, but Mother’s going to start with fish and a bottle of Vouvray—I seem to remember that it’s very good here—Le Vouvray est bon ici, n’est-ce pas?” she said turning to the waiter.

“Mais oui, madame!” he said with just the right kind of earnest enthusiasm, “c’est une spécialité.”

“Bon,” she said crisply. “Alors, une bouteille du Vouvray pour commencer—does that go for the rest of you, mes enfants?” she said, looking around her. They nodded their agreement.

“Bon—bon, madame,” the waiter said, nodding his vigorous approval, as he put the order down. “Vous serez bien content avec le Vouvray—et puis?”—He looked at her with suave respectful inquiry. “Pour manger?”

“Pour moi,” said Elinor, “le poisson—le filet de sole—n’est-ce pas—Marguery?”

“Bon, bon,” he said with enthusiastic approval, writing it down. “Un filet de sole—Marguery—pour madame—et pour monsieur?” he said turning suavely to Eugene.

“La męme chose,” said that linguist recklessly and even as the waiter was nodding enthusiastically, and saying:

“Bon. Bon—parfaitement! La męme chose pour monsieur,” and writing it down, the others had begun to laugh at him. Starwick with his bubbling laugh, Elinor with her gay little smile of raillery and even Ann, the dark and sullen beauty of her face suddenly luminous with a short and almost angry laugh as she said:

“He hasn’t said his other word yet—why don’t you tell him that you want some ‘mawndiawnts’”—ironically she imitated his pronunciation of the word.

“What’s wrong with ‘mendiants’?” he said, scowling at her. “What’s the joke?”

“Nothing,” said Starwick, bubbling with laughter. “They’re very good. They really are, you know,” he said earnestly. “Only we’ve been wondering if you wouldn’t learn another word some day and order something else.”

“I know lots of other words,” he said angrily. “Only, how am I ever going to get a chance to use them when the rest of you make fun of me every time I open my mouth?—I don’t see what the great joke is,” he said resentfully. “These French people understand what I want to say,” he said. “Ecoute, garçon,” he said appealingly to the attentive and smiling waiter.—“Vous pouvez comprendre—”

“Cawmprawndre,” said Ann mockingly.

“Vous pouvez comprendre—ce-que-je-veux-dire,” he blundered on painfully.

“Mais oui, monsieur!” the waiter cried with a beautiful reassuring smile. “Parfaitement. Vous parlez trčs bien. Vous ętes ici ŕ Paris depuis longtemps?”

“Depuis six semaines,” he said proudly.

The waiter lifted arms and eyebrows eloquent with astounded disbelief.

“Mais c’est merveilleux!” the waiter cried, and as the others jeered Eugene said with bitter sarcasm:

“Everyone can’t be a fine old French scholar the way you are; after all, I’m not travelled like the rest of you—I’ve never had your opportunities. And even after six weeks here there are still a few words in the French language that I don’t know. . . . But I’m going to speak the ones I do know,” he said defiantly, “and no one’s going to stop me.”

“Of course you are, darling!” Elinor said quickly and smoothly, putting her hand out on his arm with a swift movement. “Don’t let them tease you! . . . I think it’s mean of you,” she said reproachfully. “Let the poor dear speak his French if he wants to— I think it’s sweet.”

He looked at her with a flushed and angry face while Starwick bubbled with laughter, tried to think of something to say in reply, but, as always, she was too quick for him, and before he could think of something apt and telling, she had flashed off as light and quick as a rapier blade:

“—Now, children,” she was studying the card again—“what shall it be after the fish—who wants meat—?”—

“No fish for me,” said Ann, looking sullenly at the menu. “I’ll take—” suddenly her dark, sullen, and nobly beautiful face was transfigured by her short and almost angry laugh again—“I’ll take an ‘awmlet,’” she said sarcastically, looking at Eugene.

“Well, take your ‘awmlet,’” he muttered. “Only I don’t say it that way.”

“Pas de poisson,” she said quietly to the waiter. “I want an omelette.”

“Bon, bon,” he nodded vigorously and wrote. “Une omelette pour madame. Et puis aprčs—?” he said inquiringly.

“Rien,” she said.

He looked slightly surprised and hurt, but in a moment, turning to Eugene, said: