Robert Chambers - The Adventures of a Modest Man

"There is," said Dulcima, referring to her guidebook, "a café near here in the Bois de Boulogne, called the Café des Fleurs de Chine. I should so love to breakfast at a Chinese café."

"With chopsticks!" added Alida, soulfully clasping her gloved hands.

"Your Café Chinois is doubtless a rendezvous for Apaches," I said, "but we'll try it if you wish."

I am wondering, now, just what sort of a place that café is, set like a jewel among the green trees of the Bois. I know it is expensive, but not very expensive; I know, also, that the dainty young persons who sipped mint on the terrace appeared to disregard certain conventionalities which I had been led to believe were never disregarded in France.

The safest way was to pretend a grave abstraction when their bright eyes wandered toward one; and I did this, without exactly knowing why I did.

"I wish," said I to Dulcima, "that Van Dieman were here. He understands all this surface life one sees in the parks and streets."

"Do you really wish that Mr. Van Dieman were here?" asked Alida, softly coloring.

I looked at her gravely.

"Because," she said, "I believe he is coming about the middle of May."

"Oh, he is, is he?" I said, without enthusiasm. "Well, we shall doubtless be in the Rhine by the middle of May."

"My gowns couldn't be finished until June any way," said Dulcima, laying her gloved fingers on Alida's chair.

So they were allies, then.

"I didn't know you had ordered any gowns," I said superciliously.

"I haven't – yet," she said coolly.

"Neither have I," began Alida; but I refused to hear any more.

"When you are at your modistes you may talk gowns until you faint away," said I; "but now let us try to take an intelligent interest in this famous and ancient capital of European civilization and liberty – "

"Did you notice that girl's gown?" motioned Alida to Dulcima.

I also looked. But it was not the beauty of the gown that I found so remarkable.

"I wonder," thought I – "but no matter. I wish that idiot Van Dieman were here."

That evening, after my daughters had retired, I determined to sit up later than I ought to. The reckless ideas which Paris inspired in me, alarmed me now and then. But I was game.

So I seated myself in the moonlit court of the hotel and lighted an unwise cigar and ordered what concerns nobody except the man who swallowed it, and, crossing my legs, looked amiably around.

Williams sat at the next table.

"Hello, old sport," he said affably.

"Williams," I said, "guess who I was thinking about a moment ago."

"A girl?"

"No, of course not. I was thinking of Jim Landon. What ever became of him?"

"Jim? Oh, he's all right."

"Successful?"

"Very. You ought to have heard of him over there; but I suppose you don't keep up with art news."

"No," I admitted, ashamed – "it's rather difficult to keep up with anything on Long Island. Does Jim Landon live here?"

"In Normandy, with his wife."

"Oh, he got married. Was it that wealthy St. Louis girl who – "

"No; she married into the British Peerage. No, Landon didn't do anything of that sort. Quite the contrary."

"He – he didn't marry his model, did he?"

"Yes – in a way."

"In a way?"

Williams summoned a waiter who shifted his equipment to my table.

"It's rather an unusual story," he said. "Would you care to hear it?"

"Does it portray, with your well known literary skill, the confusion of a parent?" I inquired cautiously. "If it does, don't tell it."

"It doesn't."

"Oh. Nobody puts it all over the old man?"

"No, not in this particular instance. Shall I begin?"

"Shoot," I said.

He began with his usual graceful gesture:

Landon was dead broke.

As it had not been convenient for him to breakfast that morning, he was irritable. The mockery of handsome hangings and antique furniture in the outer studio increased his irritation as he walked through it into the rough, inner workshop, which was hung with dusty casts and dreary with clay and plaster.

Here Ellis found him, an hour later, smoking a cigarette to deceive his appetite, and sulkily wetting down the clay bust of a sheep-faced old lady – an order of the post-mortem variety which he was executing from a gruesome photograph.

"How," inquired Ellis, "is the coy Muse treating you these palmy, balmy days?"

Landon swore and squirted a spongeful of water over the old lady's side curls.

"My! my! As bad as that?" commented Ellis, raising his eyebrows. "I thought you expected to be paid for that tombstone."

"Man, I've been eating, drinking, and sleeping on that tombstone all winter. Last night I gnawed off the 'Hic Jacet' and washed it down with the date. There's nothing left."

"You've – ah – breakfasted, dear friend?"

"That's all right – "

" Have you?"

"No. But there's a man from Fourth Avenue coming to buy some of that superfluous magnificence in the show studio. Besides, I'll be paid for this old lady in a day or two – Where are you going?"

"Out," said Ellis, briefly.

Landon, left alone, threw a bit of wet clay at the doorknob, stood irresolutely, first on one foot, then on the other; then with a hearty scowl at the sheep-faced old lady washed her complacent face with a dripping sponge.

"Williams!" I interrupted violently, "how do you know all those details?"

"My Lord, man!" he retorted; "I write for a living. I've got to know them."

"Go on, then," I said.

He went on:

A few moments later Ellis came in with rolls, milk and fruit.

"That's very decent of you," said Landon, but the other cut him short, excitedly.

"Jim, who is the divinity I just met in your hallway? Yours?"

"What divinity?"

"Her hair," said Ellis, a little wildly, "is the color of Tuscan gold; her eyes, ultra marine; and the skin of her is just pure snow with a brushful of carmine across the lips – and the Great Sculptor Himself must have moulded her body – "

Landon shrugged and buttered a roll. "You let her alone," he said.

"Reveal to me instantly her name, titles, and quality!" shouted Ellis, unsheathing a Japanese sword.

"Her name," said Landon, "is O'Connor; her quality is that of a shopgirl. She is motherless and alone, and inhabits a kennel across the hall. Don't make eyes at her. She'll probably believe whatever the first gentlemanly blackguard tells her."

Ellis said: "Why may I not – in a delicately detached and gayly impersonal, yet delightfully and evasively irrational manner, calculated to deceive nobody – "

"That would sound very funny in the Latin Quarter. This is New York." He rose, frowning. Presently he picked up the sponge. "Better let a lonely heart alone, unless you're in earnest," he said, and flung the sponge back into a bucket of water, dried his hands, and looked around.

"Have you sold any pictures yet?"

"Not one. I thought I had a Copper King nailed to the easel, but Fate separated us on a clinch and he got away and disappeared behind the bars of his safe deposit. How goes the market with you?"

"Dead. I can live on my furniture for a while."

"I thought you were going in on that competition for the Department of Peace at Washington."

"I am, if I have enough money left to hire a model."

Ellis rose, twirled his walking-stick meditatively, glanced at his carefully brushed hat, and placed it gravely on his head.

"Soon," he said cheerfully, "it will be time for straw hats. But where I'm going to get one I don't know. Poverty used to be considered funny in the Quarter; but it's no idle jest in this town. Well – I'll let your best girl alone, Jim, if you feel that way about it."

They laughed and shook hands.

In the corridor Ellis looked hard at the closed door opposite, and his volatile heart gave a tortured thump; he twirled his stick and sauntered out into Stuyvesant Square.