TWELVE: RICHARD’S FRIENDS
Two men and a woman were having breakfast in the studio in their dressing-gowns.
“Oh, my God, Grandison!” exclaimed Richard Sotheby, after looking into the letter which Anne had posted two days before in London. “What am I to do? Here is that girl arriving in Paris to-morrow. She asks me to get her lodgings, and to meet her at the station. What on earth am I to do? I wonder if I could stop her coming.... She doesn’t give her London address. No, I can’t stop her. Oh, what a curse....”
Grandison laughed and, turning to the woman beside her, told her the news in bad French. A look of incredulity passed over her brown face, and then she also began to laugh. The dark eyes sparkled with malice, the even white teeth shone, she put the point of her healthy pink tongue between her painted lips; and then, the humour of the situation increasing as she turned the news over in her mind, she sprang up and danced bare-footed round the breakfast table in the middle of the immense room. The skirts of the silk dressing-gown whirled round the lithe body; every movement was lovely, but neither of the men looked at her. When she stopped it was to pour out a flood of questions which went unanswered.
“It is not a joke,” said Richard Sotheby gloomily. “You will have to help me. You don’t object, I suppose,” he added in French to the girl, “if Grandison devotes his time to her?”
“How insolent you are, Richard!” said the woman, taking hold of Grandison’s arm, and putting her cheek beside his head. “I am to be sacrificed because you can’t face a woman. I could call you some hard names if I chose.” She pouted, but at once went on: “But I won’t, for I sympathize with you. Really I am anxious to see this girl of yours, Richard. It will be a curiosity. Are you going to bring her to live with us? I shall be charming to her, and she will keep me company sometimes. Two men is more than I can manage.” She pouted again, and added in tones of deep tenderness: “Two dirty Englishmen.”
Richard Sotheby looked at her with a patient smile, then, ignoring her questions, he turned to his friend and said, speaking in English: “And two women is more than I can manage.”
Grandison flushed with anger, but Richard forestalled anything he might have said by adding: “My dear, you know I am fond of Ginette; don’t misunderstand what I say. But two women is more than I can put up with....”
“Why on earth will you persist in regarding Ginette as a woman?” demanded the younger man in tones of fury. “Woman! woman! It’s always woman with you. Ginette is Ginette, just as I am Gerald and you are Richard.”
Sotheby did not reply, and his friend’s angry tones soon subsided. Harmony was restored while the breakfast dishes were cleared away, and for the rest of the morning Anne’s arrival was discussed calmly, sometimes in English, sometimes in French, while the two men painted and Ginette posed. In the evening everything that had been said in the morning was repeated, but at last it was decided that Grandison should meet Anne at the station, instead of Richard, and that he should take her to an hotel.
“Let it be on the other side of Paris,” said Richard next morning, as he and Grandison left the studio on their way to the station, for he had decided to accompany his friend in order to point out the girl whom he was to meet.
“Everything in France is different,” Anne said to herself as she looked out of the window of the train. “Those trees must be elms, but they have been shaved like French poodles so that they are scarcely recognizable. These are fields of corn, and here are cocks and hens and cart-sheds, but they do not seem to be the real things so much as imitations of ours. And the houses! How extraordinarily different are the houses!” for the train was passing through a station, and building after building flashed by her: dreary houses with the stucco peeling off them, each with its broken-slatted shutters beside the windows, houses such as do not exist in England.
“If there is any beauty in this country it is of another kind from our English beauty, just as the ugliness is unlike our ugliness.” The change did not dismay her; it had the same effect of strangeness as the reflection of her own cropped head in the glass, seen unexpectedly as she lifted her handbag from off the luggage rack.
The train was approaching Paris, and before many minutes had passed a porter in a blue blouse had seized upon her handbag and Anne forgot to look for Richard Sotheby in the effort to produce a good impression on the porter. But even the inadequacy of her French could not detain him for more than a moment. His moustache trembled eagerly, his eye flashed, then he had disappeared.
“What a lovely outline there is to his cheek, how clear his complexion, how expressive his every movement!” and looking after the porter she began to fancy that if all Frenchmen were as handsome as the porter she would be in love with them all. “The beauty of the French face,” she said, “lies in the beauty of the cheekbones. An English face is made up of eyes and nose and mouth: the rest of the face is a blank space, but take away a Frenchman’s eyes: so often like eggs, or olives, take away his nose, and his mouth (always an uninteresting mouth) and you find his face is still full of expression and of beauty, indeed the face is improved.”
But the porter was back, and had set off down the platform with a commanding gesture to Anne to follow him, when she found herself being accosted by a stranger.
“Is this Miss Dunnock? My name’s Grandison,” he said. “Richard Sotheby asked me to meet you here; he is not able to come himself....”
“Ginette Grandison’s brother,” Anne said to herself, looking into the surly, boyish face, and noticing Grandison’s shyness. Meanwhile the porter with the lovely cheekbones had disappeared with her suit-case.
“What does the porter matter?” she thought. “What does the suit-case matter? What does it matter what this young man is mumbling about Richard? No, nothing matters. This is Paris; I have arrived, and a delightful happy life awaits me with these charming people. The opera ... friends.” In such a mood it seemed scarcely surprising that Richard should after all come up to them just as they were climbing into a cab.
“What is the latest news from Dry Coulter?” he asked, taking the seat beside her. Anne had not slept; the channel crossing by night was too exciting an experience to be missed, and she had remained on deck, watching the receding lights of England disappear, and then the lights of France springing up out of the darkness and growing in brilliance and in number.
“Dry Coulter?” she asked, and for the first moment the name conveyed nothing to her. “How can you ask about Dry Coulter when we are in Paris!” Richard laughed and Anne added at once: “Oh, I went with your father and mother and Rachel to see the new cottages, and the site for the hotel.”
“What hotel?” asked Richard, but while Anne was explaining she did not notice the look of anxiety on his face, for she was too much taken up with looking out of the taxi window. Soon she was asking questions: “What is that building? that street? that monument?” and was astonished that neither Richard nor his friend could tell her. She would have liked to spend hours driving about Paris, feeling Mr. Grandison’s gaze fixed upon her, and aware of the slight flush on her own cheek, but suddenly they rattled over a bridge and had turned into a narrow lane.
“I have taken a room for you here,” said Richard as they drew up. “You get your breakfast in your room, and an evening meal for about four shillings a day. I took it for a week. I suppose you will be staying a week in Paris.”
“I shall be staying for ever,” answered Anne.
Grandison gave a short, loud laugh. “I like the way you said that,” he exclaimed, handing her suit-case out of the cab.
A sleepy-looking man had opened the hotel door, and was taking her luggage.
“We’ll call for you this evening, and take you out to dinner if that would suit you,” said Richard; and the next moment the taxi began to move off and she found herself alone.
“I shall like Mr. Grandison,” she said as she followed the doorkeeper upstairs, and the excitement of looking at her room was mingled with the excitement of imagining that in a few days she would be laughing with the handsome man who had met her, and that he would lose his surliness and his shyness as they walked through Paris side by side. By the time she had finished unpacking she felt tired, and she lay down on the bed to rest. She could not sleep, and an hour later, when she looked out of the window and saw that the sunlight, which had greeted her on her arrival, had given place to driving rain. She had no umbrella, nor mackintosh, so she could not go out, and she felt shy and uncomfortable as she walked through the passages of the hotel. When she tried to speak to the chambermaid she found that she had forgotten her few words of French, but at last the day passed by and she was called from her room to find Mr. Grandison waiting for her in the hall.
“Richard sent me: he will meet us in the restaurant,” he said. They got into a cab, for it was still raining, and drove in silence until Anne, looking out of the window, asked what street they were in. “I don’t know,” answered the young man. “There are so many streets in Paris. But it is quite easy to find one’s way about.”
Anne would have liked to ask him about his sister, but she lacked the courage and nothing more was said. The restaurant to which they had driven was like a hundred others which they had passed on the way, and appeared indistinguishable from the restaurants on either side of it; each with basket-work chairs heaped upside down on the little iron tables outside, with an awning flapping in the wind, and “Brasserie” written in gigantic letters along the front. It was still raining, but when they had passed through the doors they found the room was crowded.
Richard was waiting for them at a corner table, and they sat down. Soon food was brought them, and Richard began to speak about the restaurant, but Anne hardly took in his words and forgot to help herself from the little dishes, for she was charmed by the scene before her: the small tables, each with its merry party, men laughing hastily before filling their mouths with soup, swallowing it, and then laughing again as they tore the long rolls of bread to pieces with their fingers.
But Richard was pressing Anne to help herself, handing her the little dishes and filling her glass with yellow wine, then turning and speaking to Grandison about some play of Ibsen’s which was being acted at a theatre in Paris. Anne’s pleasure was increased by knowing that Richard and his friend were talking of a play which she had read, and that she could share in the discussion if she chose, but her attention wandered once more, and she was the first to notice a girl who came towards them threading her way between the tables, followed by a fat man with a square red beard, who stopped to speak to some acquaintances who hailed him as he passed. But the girl came on and held out a cool brown hand for Anne to shake.
“Mademoiselle Lariboisière—always called Ginette,” said Richard. Ginette was beautiful, very beautiful, and Anne wondered how the mistake had arisen which had made her expect Ginette to be Mr. Grandison’s sister. Instead of that she was a Frenchwoman with a lean brown face like a mask and dark hazel eyes with black lashes.
“If I were only like Ginette,” she thought, a wish that recurred for many days afterwards whenever she was in her company, never guessing that the French girl was saying to herself: “If I were only like this English girl of Richard’s!”
Ginette sat down opposite them without appearing surprised that Richard and Gerald should go on talking in English and pay no attention to her, interrupting each other, laughing at one moment and becoming almost angry in the next. But though they were talking in English, Anne did not listen either; she gazed across the table at Ginette, wishing that she could speak to her and get to know her. At last the meal was over, the dishes were cleared away and soon they were joined by the fat man, in spite of all appearances an American.
Anne found that he was kissing her hand, and a drop of soup from his beard was smeared over her fingers. Her face showed her disgust as she jumped up from her seat, and without speaking to the American, who had drawn a chair near her, she went over to Ginette. But Ginette did not understand English, and after one or two halting sentences Anne fell into silence.
The group round the table was joined by several people, and each newcomer shook hands all round the table before sitting down. Anne had never shaken hands so often in her life, but there was no more hand-kissing and there were no more beards. A Chinaman seated himself beside Ginette, and they spoke so slowly that Anne was able to follow their conversation; and she was astonished that she had heard everything they said on the lips of English curates at tea parties in English parsonages. After a little while Grandison came and sat beside her and poured her out a glass of something warm, perfumed and sticky; it seemed the most delicious liquid that she had ever tasted. Conversation flowed on all sides of her, but she sat quiet, saying nothing and looking at the pink face and the fair hair of Richard’s friend and then at the Chinaman, who was talking so quietly and so tediously about the fatigues of railway journeys to Ginette, both of them indifferent to the shouting, excited group clustered round Richard and the red-bearded American. Anne did not gather what the subject of their argument was and she felt no desire to do anything. An hour passed and then another hour, and once Grandison called to the waiter, who refilled her little glass with the liqueur. It was enough for her to know that she was in Paris, and that this was her welcome. The voices, the faces, the Chinaman and Ginette melted into a dream full of colour and of movement and shot through with music; her head nodded and when Grandison touched her on the shoulder she smiled at him and realized that she was very tired.
“I want to go to bed,” she said. “Will you please tell me the address of my hotel?”
“I’ll see you home,” he said. “Richard is set now; he will stay here for hours.”
It had stopped raining, and they walked. The streets gleamed, and they turned into a great open place filled with trees and people sauntering under them. Men in groups were talking and laughing, pretty girls and painted women flashed their golden teeth as they passed by.
“How beautiful a town is,” Anne said, almost unconscious that she was speaking aloud. “But I shall never be at home in one. The stones of the streets frighten me. I love the garden where:
Stumbling on melons as I pass
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass,
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.”
She paused for a moment, stumbled with sleepiness and took Grandison’s arm.
“The crowd here is so thick,” she continued. “The faces search one’s face, the eyes meet one’s eyes, yet they all seem to be looking for someone they can never find.”
They walked on slowly for some way in silence, but at last she spoke again.
“I believe everyone here is pursuing a dream, just as I pursued a dream walking under the elms at home; they speak to each other and pass on, but they never know each other. Man is always alone. They speak to each other, their eyes meet and sparkle; they smile and take each other by the arm: all in a dream. Here am I walking beside you, both of us are dreaming, unable to awake or to speak to each other.” There was a pause; Grandison did not contradict what she had said, and then she murmured, more to herself than to him: “I am utterly alone, but so is everybody else.”
They continued walking for a long way through deserted streets. Anne was feeling depressed by her train of thought, and Grandison was silent, but when at last they reached the Rue de Beaune she felt as if he had spoken and she had understood.
They shook hands, he looked into her eyes, cleared his throat as if he were going to speak, swallowed something, but then turned away without a word.
“I was wrong,” Anne said, feeling her heart filled once more with hope. “There is patience and nobility and honesty and faithfulness in the world.” As she dropped asleep it seemed to her that these qualities were inseparable from blue eyes and fair hair and fresh, blunt features.