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BOOK I: CHAPTER IV
As their motor-cab, on the way from the Gare du Nord, turned
into the central glitter of the Boulevard, Darrow had bent
over to point out an incandescent threshold.
"There!"
Above the doorway, an arch of flame flashed out the name of
a great actress, whose closing performances in a play of
unusual originality had been the theme of long articles in
the Paris papers which Darrow had tossed into their
compartment at Calais.
"That's what you must see before you're twenty-four hours
older!"
The girl followed his gesture eagerly. She was all awake
and alive now, as if the heady rumours of the streets, with
their long effervescences of light, had passed into her
veins like wine.
"Cerdine? Is that where she acts?" She put her head out of
the window, straining back for a glimpse of the sacred
threshold. As they flew past it she sank into her seat with
a satisfied sigh.
"It's delicious enough just to KNOW she's there! I've
never seen her, you know. When I was here with Mamie Hoke
we never went anywhere but to the music halls, because she
couldn't understand any French; and when I came back
afterward to the Farlows' I was dead broke, and couldn't
afford the play, and neither could they; so the only chance
we had was when friends of theirs invited us--and once it
was to see a tragedy by a Roumanian lady, and the other time
it was for 'L'Ami Fritz' at the Francais."
Darrow laughed. "You must do better than that now. 'Le
Vertige' is a fine thing, and Cerdine gets some wonderful
effects out of it. You must come with me tomorrow evening
to see it--with your friends, of course.--That is," he
added, "if there's any sort of chance of getting seats."
The flash of a street lamp lit up her radiant face. "Oh,
will you really take us? What fun to think that it's
tomorrow already!"
It was wonderfully pleasant to be able to give such
pleasure. Darrow was not rich, but it was almost impossible
for him to picture the state of persons with tastes and
perceptions like his own, to whom an evening at the theatre
was an unattainable indulgence. There floated through his
mind an answer of Mrs. Leath's to his enquiry whether she
had seen the play in question. "No. I meant to, of course,
but one is so overwhelmed with things in Paris. And then
I'm rather sick of Cerdine--one is always being dragged to
see her."
That, among the people he frequented, was the usual attitude
toward such opportunities. There were too many, they were a
nuisance, one had to defend one's self! He even remembered
wondering, at the moment, whether to a really fine taste the
exceptional thing could ever become indifferent through
habit; whether the appetite for beauty was so soon dulled
that it could be kept alive only by privation. Here, at any
rate, was a fine chance to experiment with such a hunger: he
almost wished he might stay on in Paris long enough to take
the measure of Miss Viner's receptivity.
She was still dwelling on his promise, "It's too beautiful
of you! Oh, don't you THINK you'll be able to get
seats?" And then, after a pause of brimming appreciation: "I
wonder if you'll think me horrid?--but it may be my only
chance; and if you can't get places for us all, wouldn't you
perhaps just take ME? After all, the Farlows may have
seen it!"
He had not, of course, thought her horrid, but only the more
engaging, for being so natural, and so unashamed of showing
the frank greed of her famished youth. "Oh, you shall go
somehow!" he had gaily promised her; and she had dropped
back with a sigh of pleasure as their cab passed into the
dimly-lit streets of the Farlows' quarter beyond the
Seine...
This little passage came back to him the next morning, as he
opened his hotel window on the early roar of the Northern
Terminus.
The girl was there, in the room next to him. That had been
the first point in his waking consciousness. The second was
a sense of relief at the obligation imposed on him by this
unexpected turn of everts. To wake to the necessity of
action, to postpone perforce the fruitless contemplation of
his private grievance, was cause enough for gratitude, even
if the small adventure in which he found himself involved
had not, on its own merits, roused an instinctive curiosity
to see it through.
When he and his companion, the night before, had reached the
Farlows' door in the rue de la Chaise, it was only to find,
after repeated assaults on its panels, that the Farlows were
no longer there. They had moved away the week before, not
only from their apartment but from Paris; and Miss Viner's
breach with Mrs. Murrett had been too sudden to permit her
letter and telegram to overtake them. Both communications,
no doubt, still reposed in a pigeon-hole of the loge;
but its custodian, when drawn from his lair, sulkily
declined to let Miss Viner verify the fact, and only flung
out, in return for Darrow's bribe, the statement that the
Americans had gone to Joigny.
To pursue them there at that hour was manifestly impossible,
and Miss Viner, disturbed but not disconcerted by this new
obstacle, had quite simply acceded to Darrow's suggestion
that she should return for what remained of the night to the
hotel where he had sent his luggage.
The drive back through the dark hush before dawn, with the
nocturnal blaze of the Boulevard fading around them like the
false lights of a magician's palace, had so played on her
impressionability that she seemed to give no farther thought
to her own predicament. Darrow noticed that she did not
feel the beauty and mystery of the spectacle as much as its
pressure of human significance, all its hidden implications
of emotion and adventure. As they passed the shadowy
colonnade of the Francais, remote and temple-like in the
paling lights, he felt a clutch on his arm, and heard the
cry: "There are things THERE that I want so desperately
to see!" and all the way back to the hotel she continued to
question him, with shrewd precision and an artless thirst
for detail, about the theatrical life of Paris. He was
struck afresh, as he listened, by the way in which her
naturalness eased the situation of constraint, leaving to it
only a pleasant savour of good fellowship. It was the kind
of episode that one might, in advance, have characterized as
"awkward", yet that was proving, in the event, as much
outside such definitions as a sunrise stroll with a dryad in
a dew-drenched forest; and Darrow reflected that mankind
would never have needed to invent tact if it had not first
invented social complications.
It had been understood, with his good-night to Miss Viner,
that the next morning he was to look up the Joigny trains,
and see her safely to the station; but, while he breakfasted
and waited for a time-table, he recalled again her cry of
joy at the prospect of seeing Cerdine. It was certainly a
pity, since that most elusive and incalculable of artists
was leaving the next week for South America, to miss what
might be a last sight of her in her greatest part; and
Darrow, having dressed and made the requisite excerpts from
the time-table, decided to carry the result of his
deliberations to his neighbour's door.
It instantly opened at his knock, and she came forth looking
as if she had been plunged into some sparkling element which
had curled up all her drooping tendrils and wrapped her in a
shimmer of fresh leaves.
"Well, what do you think of me?" she cried; and with a hand
at her waist she spun about as if to show off some miracle
of Parisian dress-making.
"I think the missing trunk has come--and that it was worth
waiting for!"
"You DO like my dress?"
"I adore it! I always adore new dresses--why, you don't mean
to say it's NOT a new one?"
She laughed out her triumph.
"No, no, no! My trunk hasn't come, and this is only my old
rag of yesterday--but I never knew the trick to fail!" And,
as he stared: "You see," she joyously explained, "I've
always had to dress in all kinds of dreary left-overs, and
sometimes, when everybody else was smart and new, it used to
make me awfully miserable. So one day, when Mrs. Murrett
dragged me down unexpectedly to fill a place at dinner, I
suddenly thought I'd try spinning around like that, and say
to every one: 'WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME?' And, do
you know, they were all taken in, including Mrs. Murrett,
who didn't recognize my old turned and dyed rags, and told
me afterward it was awfully bad form to dress as if I were
somebody that people would expect to know! And ever since,
whenever I've particularly wanted to look nice, I've just
asked people what they thought of my new frock; and they're
always, always taken in!"
She dramatized her explanation so vividly that Darrow felt
as if his point were gained.
"Ah, but this confirms your vocation--of course," he cried,
"you must see Cerdine!" and, seeing her face fall at this
reminder of the change in her prospects, he hastened to set
forth his plan. As he did so, he saw how easy it was to
explain things to her. She would either accept his
suggestion, or she would not: but at least she would waste
no time in protestations and objections, or any vain
sacrifice to the idols of conformity. The conviction that
one could, on any given point, almost predicate this of her,
gave him the sense of having advanced far enough in her
intimacy to urge his arguments against a hasty pursuit of
her friends.
Yes, it would certainly be foolish--she at once agreed--in
the case of such dear indefinite angels as the Farlows, to
dash off after them without more positive proof that they
were established at Joigny, and so established that they
could take her in. She owned it was but too probable that
they had gone there to "cut down", and might be doing so in
quarters too contracted to receive her; and it would be
unfair, on that chance, to impose herself on them
unannounced. The simplest way of getting farther light on
the question would be to go back to the rue de la Chaise,
where, at that more conversable hour, the concierge
might be less chary of detail; and she could decide on her
next step in the light of such facts as he imparted.
Point by point, she fell in with the suggestion,
recognizing, in the light of their unexplained flight, that
the Farlows might indeed be in a situation on which one
could not too rashly intrude. Her concern for her friends
seemed to have effaced all thought of herself, and this
little indication of character gave Darrow a quite
disproportionate pleasure. She agreed that it would be well
to go at once to the rue de la Chaise, but met his proposal
that they should drive by the declaration that it was a
"waste" not to walk in Paris; so they set off on foot
through the cheerful tumult of the streets.
The walk was long enough for him to learn many things about
her. The storm of the previous night had cleared the air,
and Paris shone in morning beauty under a sky that was all
broad wet washes of white and blue; but Darrow again noticed
that her visual sensitiveness was less keen than her feeling
for what he was sure the good Farlows--whom he already
seemed to know--would have called "the human interest." She
seemed hardly conscious of sensations of form and colour, or
of any imaginative suggestion, and the spectacle before
them--always, in its scenic splendour, so moving to her
companion--broke up, under her scrutiny, into a thousand
minor points: the things in the shops, the types of
character and manner of occupation shown in the passing
faces, the street signs, the names of the hotels they
passed, the motley brightness of the flower-carts, the
identity of the churches and public buildings that caught
her eye. But what she liked best, he divined, was the mere
fact of being free to walk abroad in the bright air, her
tongue rattling on as it pleased, while her feet kept time
to the mighty orchestration of the city's sounds. Her
delight in the fresh air, in the freedom, light and sparkle
of the morning, gave him a sudden insight into her stifled
past; nor was it indifferent to him to perceive how much his
presence evidently added to her enjoyment. If only as a
sympathetic ear, he guessed what he must be worth to her.
The girl had been dying for some one to talk to, some one
before whom she could unfold and shake out to the light her
poor little shut-away emotions. Years of repression were
revealed in her sudden burst of confidence; and the pity she
inspired made Darrow long to fill her few free hours to the
brim.
She had the gift of rapid definition, and his questions as
to the life she had led with the Farlows, during the
interregnum between the Hoke and Murrett eras, called up
before him a queer little corner of Parisian existence. The
Farlows themselves--he a painter, she a "magazine writer"--
rose before him in all their incorruptible simplicity: an
elderly New England couple, with vague yearnings for
enfranchisement, who lived in Paris as if it were a
Massachusetts suburb, and dwelt hopefully on the "higher
side" of the Gallic nature. With equal vividness she set
before him the component figures of the circle from which
Mrs. Farlow drew the "Inner Glimpses of French Life"
appearing over her name in a leading New England journal:
the Roumanian lady who had sent them tickets for her
tragedy, an elderly French gentleman who, on the strength of
a week's stay at Folkestone, translated English fiction for
the provincial press, a lady from Wichita, Kansas, who
advocated free love and the abolition of the corset, a
clergyman's widow from Torquay who had written an "English
Ladies' Guide to Foreign Galleries" and a Russian sculptor
who lived on nuts and was "almost certainly" an anarchist.
It was this nucleus, and its outer ring of musical,
architectural and other American students, which posed
successively to Mrs. Farlow's versatile fancy as a centre of
"University Life", a "Salon of the Faubourg St. Germain", a
group of Parisian "Intellectuals" or a "Cross-section of
Montmartre"; but even her faculty for extracting from it the
most varied literary effects had not sufficed to create a
permanent demand for the "Inner Glimpses", and there were
days when--Mr. Farlow's landscapes being equally
unmarketable--a temporary withdrawal to the country
(subsequently utilized as "Peeps into Chateau Life") became
necessary to the courageous couple.
Five years of Mrs. Murrett's world, while increasing Sophy's
tenderness for the Farlows, had left her with few illusions
as to their power of advancing her fortunes; and she did not
conceal from Darrow that her theatrical projects were of the
vaguest. They hung mainly on the problematical good-will of
an ancient comedienne, with whom Mrs. Farlow had a slight
acquaintance (extensively utilized in "Stars of the French
Footlights" and "Behind the Scenes at the Francais"), and
who had once, with signs of approval, heard Miss Viner
recite the Nuit de Mai.
"But of course I know how much that's worth," the girl broke
off, with one of her flashes of shrewdness. "And besides,
it isn't likely that a poor old fossil like Mme. Dolle could
get anybody to listen to her now, even if she really thought
I had talent. But she might introduce me to people; or at
least give me a few tips. If I could manage to earn enough
to pay for lessons I'd go straight to some of the big people
and work with them. I'm rather hoping the Farlows may find
me a chance of that kind--an engagement with some American
family in Paris who would want to be 'gone round' with like
the Hokes, and who'd leave me time enough to study."
In the rue de la Chaise they learned little except the exact
address of the Farlows, and the fact that they had sub-let
their flat before leaving. This information obtained,
Darrow proposed to Miss Viner that they should stroll along
the quays to a little restaurant looking out on the Seine,
and there, over the plat du jour, consider the next step
to be taken. The long walk had given her cheeks a glow
indicative of wholesome hunger, and she made no difficulty
about satisfying it in Darrow's company. Regaining the
river they walked on in the direction of Notre Dame, delayed
now and again by the young man's irresistible tendency to
linger over the bookstalls, and by his ever-fresh response
to the shifting beauties of the scene. For two years his
eyes had been subdued to the atmospheric effects of London,
to the mysterious fusion of darkly-piled city and low-lying
bituminous sky; and the transparency of the French air,
which left the green gardens and silvery stones so
classically clear yet so softly harmonized, struck him as
having a kind of conscious intelligence. Every line of the
architecture, every arch of the bridges, the very sweep of
the strong bright river between them, while contributing to
this effect, sent forth each a separate appeal to some
sensitive memory; so that, for Darrow, a walk through the
Paris streets was always like the unrolling of a vast
tapestry from which countless stored fragrances were shaken
out.
It was a proof of the richness and multiplicity of the
spectacle that it served, without incongruity, for so
different a purpose as the background of Miss Viner's
enjoyment. As a mere drop-scene for her personal adventure
it was just as much in its place as in the evocation of
great perspectives of feeling. For her, as he again
perceived when they were seated at their table in a low
window above the Seine, Paris was "Paris" by virtue of all
its entertaining details, its endless ingenuities of
pleasantness. Where else, for instance, could one find the
dear little dishes of hors d'oeuvre, the symmetrically-
laid anchovies and radishes, the thin golden shells of
butter, or the wood strawberries and brown jars of cream
that gave to their repast the last refinement of rusticity?
Hadn't he noticed, she asked, that cooking always expressed
the national character, and that French food was clever and
amusing just because the people were? And in private houses,
everywhere, how the dishes always resembled the talk--how
the very same platitudes seemed to go into people's mouths
and come out of them? Couldn't he see just what kind of menu
it would make, if a fairy waved a wand and suddenly turned
the conversation at a London dinner into joints and
puddings? She always thought it a good sign when people
liked Irish stew; it meant that they enjoyed changes and
surprises, and taking life as it came; and such a beautiful
Parisian version of the dish as the navarin that was
just being set before them was like the very best kind of
talk--the kind when one could never tell before-hand just
what was going to be said!
Darrow, as he watched her enjoyment of their innocent feast,
wondered if her vividness and vivacity were signs of her
calling. She was the kind of girl in whom certain people
would instantly have recognized the histrionic gift. But
experience had led him to think that, except at the creative
moment, the divine flame burns low in its possessors. The
one or two really intelligent actresses he had known had
struck him, in conversation, as either bovine or primitively
"jolly". He had a notion that, save in the mind of genius,
the creative process absorbs too much of the whole stuff of
being to leave much surplus for personal expression; and the
girl before him, with her changing face and flexible
fancies, seemed destined to work in life itself rather than
in any of its counterfeits.
The coffee and liqueurs were already on the table when her
mind suddenly sprang back to the Farlows. She jumped up
with one of her subversive movements and declared that she
must telegraph at once. Darrow called for writing materials
and room was made at her elbow for the parched ink-bottle
and saturated blotter of the Parisian restaurant; but the
mere sight of these jaded implements seemed to paralyze Miss
Viner's faculties. She hung over the telegraph-form with
anxiously-drawn brow, the tip of the pen-handle pressed
against her lip; and at length she raised her troubled eyes
to Darrow's.
"I simply can't think how to say it."
"What--that you're staying over to see Cerdine?"
"But AM I--am I, really?" The joy of it flamed over her
face.
Darrow looked at his watch. "You could hardly get an answer
to your telegram in time to take a train to Joigny this
afternoon, even if you found your friends could have you."
She mused for a moment, tapping her lip with the pen. "But I
must let them know I'm here. I must find out as soon as
possible if they CAN, have me." She laid the pen down
despairingly. "I never COULD write a telegram!" she
sighed.
"Try a letter, then and tell them you'll arrive tomorrow."
This suggestion produced immediate relief, and she gave an
energetic dab at the ink-bottle; but after another interval
of uncertain scratching she paused again."Oh, it's fearful!
I don't know what on earth to say. I wouldn't for the world
have them know how beastly Mrs. Murrett's been."
Darrow did not think it necessary to answer. It was no
business of his, after all. He lit a cigar and leaned back
in his seat, letting his eyes take their fill of indolent
pleasure. In the throes of invention she had pushed back
her hat, loosening the stray lock which had invited his
touch the night before. After looking at it for a while he
stood up and wandered to the window.
Behind him he heard her pen scrape on.
"I don't want to worry them--I'm so certain they've got
bothers of their own." The faltering scratches ceased again.
"I wish I weren't such an idiot about writing: all the words
get frightened and scurry away when I try to catch them."
He glanced back at her with a smile as she bent above her
task like a school-girl struggling with a "composition." Her
flushed cheek and frowning brow showed that her difficulty
was genuine and not an artless device to draw him to her
side. She was really powerless to put her thoughts in
writing, and the inability seemed characteristic of her
quick impressionable mind, and of the incessant come-and-go
of her sensations. He thought of Anna Leath's letters, or
rather of the few he had received, years ago, from the girl
who had been Anna Summers. He saw the slender firm strokes
of the pen, recalled the clear structure of the phrases,
and, by an abrupt association of ideas, remembered that, at
that very hour, just such a document might be awaiting him
at the hotel.
What if it were there, indeed, and had brought him a
complete explanation of her telegram? The revulsion of
feeling produced by this thought made him look at the girl
with sudden impatience. She struck him as positively
stupid, and he wondered how he could have wasted half his
day with her, when all the while Mrs. Leath's letter might
be lying on his table. At that moment, if he could have
chosen, he would have left his companion on the spot; but he
had her on his hands, and must accept the consequences.
Some odd intuition seemed to make her conscious of his
change of mood, for she sprang from her seat, crumpling the
letter in her hand.
"I'm too stupid; but I won't keep you any longer. I'll go
back to the hotel and write there."
Her colour deepened, and for the first time, as their eyes
met, he noticed a faint embarrassment in hers. Could it be
that his nearness was, after all, the cause of her
confusion? The thought turned his vague impatience with her
into a definite resentment toward himself. There was really
no excuse for his having blundered into such an adventure.
Why had he not shipped the girl off to Joigny by the evening
train, instead of urging her to delay, and using Cerdine as
a pretext? Paris was full of people he knew, and his
annoyance was increased by the thought that some friend of
Mrs. Leath's might see him at the play, and report his
presence there with a suspiciously good-looking companion.
The idea was distinctly disagreeable: he did not want the
woman he adored to think he could forget her for a moment.
And by this time he had fully persuaded himself that a
letter from her was awaiting him, and had even gone so far
as to imagine that its contents might annul the writer's
telegraphed injunction, and call him to her side at once...
Content of BOOK I: CHAPTER IV [Edith Wharton's novel: The Reef]
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