Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales

“Yes, I’m obliged to admit that one’s very false.”

She stood looking at me.  “I’m going away to-morrow; after that there will be no one to tell me.”

“That will matter little,” I presently returned.  “Telling you will do no good.”

“Ah, why do you say that?” she all ruefully asked.

I said it partly because it was true, but I said it for other reasons, as well, which I found hard to define.  Standing there bareheaded in the night air, in the vague light, this young lady took on an extreme interest, which was moreover not diminished by a suspicion on my own part that she had come into the garden knowing me to be there.  I thought her charming, I thought her remarkable and felt very sorry for her; but as I looked at her the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had ventured to characterise her recurred to me with a certain force.  I had professed a contempt for them at the time, but it now came into my head that perhaps this unfortunately situated, this insidiously mutinous young creature was in quest of an effective preserver.  She was certainly not a girl to throw herself at a man’s head, but it was possible that in her intense—her almost morbid—desire to render operative an ideal charged perhaps after all with as many fallacies as her mother affirmed, she might do something reckless and irregular—something in which a sympathetic compatriot, as yet unknown, would find his profit.  The image, unshaped though it was, of this sympathetic compatriot filled me with a semblance of envy.  For some moments I was silent, conscious of these things; after which I answered her question.  “Because some things—some differences—are felt, not learned.  To you liberty’s not natural; you’re like a person who has bought a repeating watch and is, in his satisfaction, constantly taking it out of his pocket to hear it sound.  To a real American girl her liberty’s a very vulgarly-ticking old clock.”

“Ah, you mean then,” said my young friend, “that my mother has ruined me?”

“Ruined you?”

“She has so perverted my mind that when I try to be natural I’m necessarily indecent.”

I threw up hopeless arms.  “That again’s a false note!”

She turned away.  “I think you’re cruel.”

“By no means,” I declared; “because, for my own taste, I prefer you as—as—”

On my hesitating she turned back.  “As what?”

“As you are!”

She looked at me a while again, and then she said in a little reasoning tone that reminded me of her mother’s, only that it was conscious and studied, “I wasn’t aware that I’m under any particular obligation to please you!”  But she also gave a clear laugh, quite at variance with this stiffness.  Suddenly I thought her adorable.

“Oh there’s no obligation,” I said, “but people sometimes have preferences.  I’m very sorry you’re going away.”

“What does it matter to you?  You are going yourself.”

“As I’m going in a different direction, that makes all the greater separation.”

She answered nothing; she stood looking through the bars of the tall gate at the empty dusky street.  “This grille is like a cage,” she said at last.

“Fortunately it’s a cage that will open.”  And I laid my hand on the lock.

“Don’t open it”; and she pressed the gate close.  “If you should open it I’d go out.  There you’d be, monsieur—for I should never return.”

I treated it as wholly thrilling, and indeed I quite found it so.  “Where should you go?”

“To America.”

“Straight away?”

“Somehow or other.  I’d go to the American consul.  I’d beg him to give me money—to help me.”

I received this assertion without a smile; I was not in a smiling humour.  On the contrary I felt singularly excited and kept my hand on the lock of the gate.  I believed, or I thought I believed, what my companion said, and I had—absurd as it may appear—an irritated vision of her throwing herself on consular tenderness.  It struck me for a moment that to pass out of that gate with this yearning straining young creature would be to pass to some mysterious felicity.  If I were only a hero of romance I would myself offer to take her to America.

In a moment more perhaps I should have persuaded myself that I was one, but at this juncture I heard a sound hostile to the romantic note.  It was nothing less than the substantial tread of Célestine, the cook, who stood grinning at us as we turned about from our colloquy.

“I ask bien pardon,” said Célestine.  “The mother of mademoiselle desires that mademoiselle should come in immediately.  M. le Pasteur Galopin has come to make his adieux to ces dames.”

Aurora gave me but one glance, the memory of which I treasure.  Then she surrendered to Célestine, with whom she returned to the house.

The next morning, on coming into the garden, I learned that Mrs. Church and her daughter had effectively quitted us.  I was informed of this fact by old M. Pigeonneau, who sat there under a tree drinking his café-au-lait at a little green table.

“I’ve nothing to envy you,” he said; “I had the last glimpse of that charming Mees Aurore.”

“I had a very late glimpse,” I answered, “and it was all I could possibly desire.”

“I’ve always noticed,” rejoined M. Pigeonneau, “that your desires are more under control than mine.  Que voulez-vous?  I’m of the old school.  Je crois que cette race se perd.  I regret the departure of that attractive young person; she has an enchanting smile.  Ce sera une femme d’esprit.  For the mother, I can console myself.  I’m not sure she was a femme d’esprit, though she wished so prodigiously to pass for one.  Round, rosy, potelée, she yet had not the temperament of her appearance; she was a femme austère—I made up my mind to that.  I’ve often noticed that contradiction in American ladies.  You see a plump little woman with a speaking eye and the contour and complexion of a ripe peach, and if you venture to conduct yourself in the smallest degree in accordance with these indices, you discover a species of Methodist—of what do you call it?—of Quakeress.  On the other hand, you encounter a tall lean angular form without colour, without grace, all elbows and knees, and you find it’s a nature of the tropics!  The women of duty look like coquettes, and the others look like alpenstocks!  However, we’ve still la belle Madame Roque—a real femme de Rubens, celle-là.  It’s very true that to talk to her one must know the Flemish tongue!”

I had determined in accordance with my brother’s telegram to go away in the afternoon; so that, having various duties to perform, I left M. Pigeonneau to his ethnic studies.  Among other things I went in the course of the morning to the banker’s, to draw money for my journey, and there I found Mr. Ruck with a pile of crumpled letters in his lap, his chair tipped back and his eyes gloomily fixed on the fringe of the green plush table-cloth.  I timidly expressed the hope that he had got better news from home; whereupon he gave me a look in which, considering his provocation, the habit of forlorn patience was conspicuous.

He took up his letters in his large hand and, crushing them together, held it out to me.  “That stack of postal matter,” he said, “is worth about five cents.  But I guess,” he added, rising, “that I know where I am by this time.”  When I had drawn my money I asked him to come and breakfast with me at the little brasserie, much favoured by students, to which I used to resort in the old town.  “I couldn’t eat, sir,” he frankly pleaded, “I couldn’t eat.  Bad disappointments strike at the seat of the appetite.  But I guess I’ll go with you, so as not to be on show down there at the pension.  The old woman down there accuses me of turning up my nose at her food.  Well, I guess I shan’t turn up my nose at anything now.”

We went to the little brasserie, where poor Mr. Ruck made the lightest possible dejeuner.  But if he ate very little he still moved his lean jaws—he mumbled over his spoilt repast of apprehended facts; strange tough financial fare into which I was unable to bite.  I was very sorry for him, I wanted to ease him off; but the only thing I could do when we had breakfasted was to see him safely back to the Pension Beaurepas.  We went across the Treille and down the Corraterie, out of which we turned into the Rue du Rhône.  In this latter street, as all the world knows, prevail those shining shop-fronts of the watchmakers and jewellers for its long list of whom Geneva is famous.  I had always admired these elegant exhibitions and never passed them without a lingering look.  Even on this occasion, preoccupied as I was with my impending departure and with my companion’s troubles, I attached my eyes to the precious tiers that flashed and twinkled behind the huge clear plates of glass.  Thanks to this inveterate habit I recorded a fresh observation.  In the largest and most irresistible of these repositories I distinguished two ladies, seated before the counter with an air of absorption which sufficiently proclaimed their identity.  I hoped my companion wouldn’t see them, but as we came abreast of the door, a little beyond, we found it open to the warm summer air.  Mr. Ruck happened to glance in, and he immediately recognised his wife and daughter.  He slowly stopped, his eyes fixed on them; I wondered what he would do.  A salesman was in the act of holding up a bracelet before them on its velvet cushion and flashing it about in a winsome manner.

Mr. Ruck said nothing, but he presently went in; whereupon, feeling that I mustn’t lose him, I did the same.  “It will be an opportunity,” I remarked as cheerfully as possible, “for me to bid good-bye to the ladies.”

They turned round on the approach of their relative, opposing an indomitable front.  “Well, you’d better get home to breakfast—that’s what you’d better do,” his wife at once remarked.  Miss Sophy resisted in silence; she only took the bracelet from the attendant and gazed at it all fixedly.  My friend seated himself on an empty stool and looked round the shop.  “Well, we’ve been here before, and you ought to know it,” Mrs. Ruck a trifle guiltily contended.  “We were here the first day we came.”

The younger lady held out to me the precious object in her hand.  “Don’t you think that’s sweet?”

I looked at it a moment.  “No, I think it’s ugly.”

She tossed her head as at a challenge to a romp.  “Well, I don’t believe you’ve any taste.”

“Why, sir, it’s just too lovely,” said her mother.

“You’ll see it some day on me, anyway,” piped Miss Ruck.

“Not very much,” said Mr. Ruck quietly.

“It will be his own fault, then,” Miss Sophy returned.

“Well, if we’re going up to Chamouni we want to get something here,” said Mrs. Ruck.  “We mayn’t have another chance.”

Her husband still turned his eyes over the shop, whistling half under his breath.  “We ain’t going up to Chamouni.  We’re going back to New York City straight.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” she made answer.  “Don’t you suppose we want to take something home?”

“If we’re going straight back I must have that bracelet,” her daughter declared.  “Only I don’t want a velvet case; I want a satin case.”

“I must bid you good-bye,” I observed all irrelevantly to the ladies.  “I’m leaving Geneva in an hour or two.”

“Take a good look at that bracelet, so you’ll know it when you see it,” was hereupon Miss Sophy’s form of farewell to me.

“She’s bound to have something!” her mother almost proudly attested.

Mr. Ruck still vaguely examined the shop; he still just audibly whistled.  “I’m afraid he’s not at all well,” I took occasion to intimate to his wife.

She twisted her head a little and glanced at him; she had a brief but pregnant pause.  “Well, I must say I wish he’d improve!”

“A satin case, and a nice one!” cried Miss Ruck to the shopman.

I bade her other parent good-bye.  “Don’t wait for me,” he said, sitting there on his stool and not meeting my eye.  “I’ve got to see this thing through.”

I went back to the Pension Beaurepas, and when an hour later I left it with my luggage these interesting friends had not returned.

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS

I

FROM MISS MIRANDA HOPE IN PARIS TO MRS. ABRAHAM C. HOPE AT BANGOR MAINE

September 5, 1879.

My dear Mother,

I’ve kept you posted as far as Tuesday week last, and though my letter won’t have reached you yet I’ll begin another before my news accumulates too much.  I’m glad you show my letters round in the family, for I like them all to know what I’m doing, and I can’t write to every one, even if I do try to answer all reasonable expectations.  There are a great many unreasonable ones, as I suppose you know—not yours, dear mother, for I’m bound to say that you never required of me more than was natural.  You see you’re reaping your reward: I write to you before I write to any one else.

There’s one thing I hope—that you don’t show any of my letters to William Platt.  If he wants to see any of my letters he knows the right way to go to work.  I wouldn’t have him see one of these letters, written for circulation in the family, for anything in the world.  If he wants one for himself he has got to write to me first.  Let him write to me first and then I’ll see about answering him.  You can show him this if you like; but if you show him anything more I’ll never write to you again.

I told you in my last about my farewell to England, my crossing the Channel and my first impressions of Paris.  I’ve thought a great deal about that lovely England since I left it, and all the famous historic scenes I visited; but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a country in which I should care to reside.  The position of woman doesn’t seem to me at all satisfactory, and that’s a point, you know, on which I feel very strongly.  It seems to me that in England they play a very faded-out part, and those with whom I conversed had a kind of downtrodden tone, a spiritless and even benighted air, as if they were used to being snubbed and bullied and as if they liked it, which made me want to give them a good shaking.  There are a great many people—and a great many things too—over here that I should like to get at for that purpose.  I should like to shake the starch out of some of them and the dust out of the others.  I know fifty girls in Bangor that come much more up to my notion of the stand a truly noble woman should take than those young ladies in England.  But they had the sweetest way of speaking, as if it were a second nature, and the men are remarkably handsome.  (You can show that to William Platt if you like.)

I gave you my first impressions of Paris, which quite came up to my expectations, much as I had heard and read about it.  The objects of interest are extremely numerous, and the climate remarkably cheerful and sunny.  I should say the position of woman here was considerably higher, though by no means up to the American standard.  The manners of the people are in some respects extremely peculiar, and I feel at last that I’m indeed in foreign parts.  It is, however, a truly elegant city (much more majestic than New York) and I’ve spent a great deal of time in visiting the various monuments and palaces.  I won’t give you an account of all my wanderings, though I’ve been most indefatigable; for I’m keeping, as I told you before, a most exhaustive journal, which I’ll allow you the privilege of reading on my return to Bangor.  I’m getting on remarkably well, and I must say I’m sometimes surprised at my universal good fortune.  It only shows what a little Bangor energy and gumption will accomplish wherever applied.  I’ve discovered none of those objections to a young lady travelling in Europe by herself of which we heard so much before I left, and I don’t expect I ever shall, for I certainly don’t mean to look for them.  I know what I want and I always go straight for it.

I’ve received a great deal of politeness—some of it really most pressing, and have experienced no drawbacks whatever.  I’ve made a great many pleasant acquaintances in travelling round—both ladies and gentlemen—and had a great many interesting and open-hearted, if quite informal, talks.  I’ve collected a great many remarkable facts—I guess we don’t know quite everything at Bangor—for which I refer you to my journal.  I assure you my journal’s going to be a splendid picture of an earnest young life.  I do just exactly as I do in Bangor, and I find I do perfectly right.  At any rate I don’t care if I don’t.  I didn’t come to Europe to lead a merely conventional society life: I could do that at Bangor.  You know I never would do it at Bangor, so it isn’t likely I’m going to worship false gods over here.  So long as I accomplish what I desire and make my money hold out I shall regard the thing as a success.  Sometimes I feel rather lonely, especially evenings; but I generally manage to interest myself in something or in some one.  I mostly read up, evenings, on the objects of interest I’ve visited during the day, or put in time on my journal.  Sometimes I go to the theatre or else play the piano in the public parlour.  The public parlour at the hotel isn’t much; but the piano’s better than that fearful old thing at the Sebago House.  Sometimes I go downstairs and talk to the lady who keeps the books—a real French lady, who’s remarkably polite.  She’s very handsome, though in the peculiar French way, and always wears a black dress of the most beautiful fit.  She speaks a little English; she tells me she had to learn it in order to converse with the Americans who come in such numbers to this hotel.  She has given me lots of points on the position of woman in France, and seems to think that on the whole there’s hope.  But she has told me at the same time some things I shouldn’t like to write to you—I’m hesitating even about putting them into my journal—especially if my letters are to be handed round in the family.  I assure you they appear to talk about things here that we never think of mentioning at Bangor, even to ourselves or to our very closest; and it has struck me that people are closer—to each other—down in Maine than seems mostly to be expected here.  This bright-minded lady appears at any rate to think she can tell me everything because I’ve told her I’m travelling for general culture.  Well, I do want to know so much that it seems sometimes as if I wanted to know most everything; and yet I guess there are some things that don’t count for improvement.  But as a general thing everything’s intensely interesting; I don’t mean only everything this charming woman tells me, but everything I see and hear for myself.  I guess I’ll come out where I want.

I meet a great many Americans who, as a general thing, I must say, are not so polite to me as the people over here.  The people over here—especially the gentlemen—are much more what I should call almost oppressively attentive.  I don’t know whether Americans are more truly sincere; I haven’t yet made up my mind about that.  The only drawback I experience is when Americans sometimes express surprise that I should be travelling round alone; so you see it doesn’t come from Europeans.  I always have my answer ready: “For general culture, to acquire the languages and to see Europe for myself”; and that generally seems to calm them.  Dear mother, my money holds out very well, and it is real interesting.

II

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

September 16.

Since I last wrote to you I’ve left that nice hotel and come to live in a French family—which, however, is nice too.  This place is a kind of boarding-house that’s at the same time a kind of school; only it’s not like an American boarding-house, nor like an American school either.  There are four or five people here that have come to learn the language—not to take lessons, but to have an opportunity for conversation.  I was very glad to come to such a place, for I had begun to realise that I wasn’t pressing onward quite as I had dreamed with the French.  Wasn’t I going to feel ashamed to have spent two months in Paris and not to have acquired more insight into the language?  I had always heard so much of French conversation, and I found I wasn’t having much more opportunity to practise it than if I had remained at Bangor.  In fact I used to hear a great deal more at Bangor from those French-Canadians who came down to cut the ice than I saw I should ever hear at that nice hotel where was no struggle—some fond struggle being my real atmosphere.  The lady who kept the books seemed to want so much to talk to me in English (for the sake of practice, too, I suppose)—she kind of yearned to struggle too: we don’t yearn only down in Maine—that I couldn’t bear to show her I didn’t like it.  The chambermaid was Irish and all the waiters German, so I never heard a word of French spoken.  I suppose you might hear a great deal in the shops; but as I don’t buy anything—I prefer to spend my money for purposes of culture—I don’t have that advantage.

I’ve been thinking some of taking a teacher, but am well acquainted with the grammar already, and over here in Europe teachers don’t seem to think it’s really in their interest to let you press forward.  The more you strike out and realise your power the less they’ve got to teach you.  I was a good deal troubled anyhow, for I felt as if I didn’t want to go away without having at least got a general idea of French conversation.  The theatre gives you a good deal of insight, and as I told you in my last I go a good deal to the brightest places of amusement.  I find no difficulty whatever in going to such places alone, and am always treated with the politeness which, as I’ve mentioned—for I want you to feel happy about that—I encounter everywhere from the best people.  I see plenty of other ladies alone (mostly French) and they generally seem to be enjoying themselves as much as I.  Only on the stage every one talks so fast that I can scarcely make out what they say; and, besides, there are a great many vulgar expressions which it’s unnecessary to learn.  But it was this experience nevertheless that put me on the track.  The very next day after I wrote to you last I went to the Palais Royal, which is one of the principal theatres in Paris.  It’s very small but very celebrated, and in my guide-book it’s marked with two stars, which is a sign of importance attached only to first-class objects of interest.  But after I had been there half an hour I found I couldn’t understand a single word of the play, they gabbled it off so fast and made use of such peculiar expressions.  I felt a good deal disappointed and checked—I saw I wasn’t going to come out where I had dreamed.  But while I was thinking it over—thinking what I would do—I heard two gentlemen talking behind me.  It was between the acts, and I couldn’t help listening to what they said.  They were talking English, but I guess they were Americans.

“Well,” said one of them, “it all depends on what you’re after.  I’m after French; that’s what I’m after.”

“Well,” said the other, “I’m after Art.”

“Well,” said the first, “I’m after Art too; but I’m after French most.”

Then, dear mother, I’m sorry to say the second one swore a little.  He said “Oh damn French!”

“No, I won’t damn French,” said his friend.  “I’ll acquire it—that’s what I’ll do with it.  I’ll go right into a family.”

“What family’ll you go into?”

“Into some nice French family.  That’s the only way to do—to go to some place where you can talk.  If you’re after Art you want to stick to the galleries; you want to go right through the Louvre, room by room; you want to take a room a day, or something of that sort.  But if you want to acquire French the thing is to look out for some family that has got—and they mostly have—more of it than they’ve use for themselves.  How can they have use for so much as they seem to have to have?  They’ve got to work it off.  Well, they work it off on you.  There are lots of them that take you to board and teach you.  My second cousin—that young lady I told you about—she got in with a crowd like that, and they posted her right up in three months.  They just took her right in and let her have it—the full force.  That’s what they do to you; they set you right down and they talk at you.  You’ve got to understand them or perish—so you strike out in self-defence; you can’t help yourself.  That family my cousin was with has moved away somewhere, or I should try and get in with them.  They were real live people, that family; after she left my cousin corresponded with them in French.  You’ve got to do that too, to make much real head.  But I mean to find some other crowd, if it takes a lot of trouble!”