CHAPTER XXI "O YOUTH, WHAT A STAR THOU ART!"
In the Rue du Petit Thouars I sent the carriage home. The horses had done over forty miles. I would take Eloise down to Etiolles by rail, or we would hire a carriage. It did not matter in the least; it was only twelve o'clock, and we had the whole day before us.
It would be hard for the worldly minded to understand my happiness as I walked down the Rue du Petit Thouars towards the street where she lived. I had found something to love and cherish, but I was not in the least in love with Eloise after the fashion of what men call love. You must remember that ever since my earliest childhood I had been very much alone in the world. Drilled and dragooned by old Joubert, and treated kindly enough by my father, I had missed, without knowing it, the love of a mother or a sister. Little Eloise had been the only girl-child with whom I had ever played; and, though our acquaintance had been short enough, that fact had made her influence upon me doubly potent. I had found her again. She was now a woman, but, for me, she was still the child of the gardens of Lichtenberg. And the strange psychological fact remains that, though I had loved the beautiful Countess Feliciani with my childish heart, loved her almost as a man loves a woman, not a bit of that sort of love had I for Eloise, who was the Countess's facsimile. The very fact of the extraordinary likeness would have been sufficient to annul passion.
Perhaps it was because I had seen the Countess suddenly turned old and grey, sitting in that wretched room in the Hôtel de Mayence, the ruin of herself, a parable on the vanity of beauty and earthly things.
I do not know. I only can say that my love for Eloise was as pure as the love of a brother for a sister; and that my heart as I came along the sunlit Rue du Petit Thouars, rejoiced exceedingly and was glad.
I turned down the dingy little Rue Soufflot, and there, at the door, going into the dingy old house where she lived, poised like a white butterfly on the step, was Eloise.
"Eloise!" I cried, and she turned.
My hat flew off to salute her, as she stood there in the full afternoon sunshine like a little bit of the vanished May morning trapped and held in some wizard's filmy net.
"Toto!" cried Eloise, in a voice of glad surprise. And, as our hands met, I heard from one of the lower windows of the house a metallic laugh.
Glancing at the window, I saw the face of the grenadier of the night before, the one who had worn a cock's feather in his hat—Changarnier the student—who, according to the bonbon girl, was so jealous of my new-found friend.
He had a cap with a tassel on his head, a long pipe between his lips, his linen was not over-clean. A typical student of the Latin Quarter, confrère of Schaunard and Gustave Colline, he laughed again, showing his yellow teeth. I looked at him, and he did not laugh thrice.
"Come," I said, taking the hand of Eloise, whose brightness had suddenly dimmed, as though the sound from the house had cast a spell upon it. "Come." And I led her towards the Rue du Petit Thouars.
She came hesitatingly, downcast, as if fearful of being followed; and I felt like a knight leading some lady of old-time from the den of the wizard who had held her long years in bondage.
In the Rue du Petit Thouars she seemed to breathe more freely.
"I had forgotten Changarnier," said she, in a broken voice. "How horrible of him to laugh at us!"
"Beast!" said I, fury rising up in my heart at the fate that had compelled her to such a life and such surroundings.
"Ah, but," sighed Eloise, "he can be kind, too—it is his way."
"Well, let us forget him," I replied. "Eloise, you are mine now. You will be just the same as you were long ago. Do you remember, when we were all together at Lichtenberg, and the King that morning put his hand on your head? You remember when we met him in the corridor, and the Graf von Bismarck? You were holding his hand when I saw you first, and he was talking to my father and General Hahn and Major von der Goltz. Then you saw me——"
"Ah, yes!" cried Eloise, her dismal fit vanishing; "and you made such a funny little bow. And—do you remember my dress?"
"Oui, mademoiselle."
"Oui, mademoiselle! Oh, how stupid you are!" cried she, catching up the old refrain from years ago. She laughed deliciously. Childhood had caught us back, or, rather, had flung back the world from around us, for we were still children in heart and soul.
"And now," said I, "what are you to do for clothes?"
"For clothes?"
"You are not going back to that place; you are never going near it again. You must buy everything you want. I have plenty of money, and it is yours. See!" And I pulled out a handful of gold.
"O ciel!" sighed Eloise. "How delightful! But, Toto——"
"No 'buts.' What is the use of money if you do not spend it? I have a little house for you, all prepared, in the country. Oh, wait till you see it—wait till you see it. We will take the train, but you must buy yourself what you want first, and I can only give you an hour. Will an hour be enough?"
She would have kissed me, I believe, there and then, only that we were now in the Boul' Miche. Her butterfly mind was entirely fascinated by the idea of new clothes and the country. The dress she was in, of some white material, though old enough perhaps, was new-washed and speckless, and graceful as a woman's dress of that day could be. Her hat, in my eyes, was daintier far than any hat I had seen in my life. Women, no doubt, could have picked holes in her poor attire, but no man. Just as she was that day I always see her now, beyond the fashions and the years, a figure garbed in the old, old fashion of spring, sweet as the perfume of lilac-branches and the songs of birds. At the Maison Dorée, 152 Boulevard St. Michel, within the space of an hour, and for the modest sum of a hundred francs or so, she bought—I do not know what; but the purchases filled four huge cardboard boxes covered with golden bees—the true luggage of a butterfly. When they were packed in and about a cabriolet I proposed food.
"I am too happy to eat," said Eloise; so, at the fruiterer's a little way down, I bought oranges and a great bunch of Bordighera violets, and we started.
It was late afternoon when we reached the little station at Evry. Ah, what a delightful journey that was, and what an extraordinary one! Happy as lovers, yet without a thought of love; good comrades, irresponsible as birds, laughing at everything and nothing; eating our oranges, and criticising the folk at the stations we passed.
"Listen!" said Eloise, as we stood on the platform of Evry and the train drew off into the sunlit distance. I listened. The wind was blowing in the trees by the station; from some field beyond the poplar trees came the faint and far-off bleating of lambs; behind and beyond these sweet yet trivial sounds lay the great silence of the country; the silence that encompasses the leagues of growing wheat, the pasture lands all gemmed with buttercups and cowslips, the blue, song-less rivers and the green, whispering rushes; the silence of spring, which is made up of a million voices unheard but guessed, and presided over by the skylark hanging in the sparkling blue, a star of song.
Men, I think, never knew the true beauty of the country till the railway, like a grimy magician, enabled them to stand at some little wayside station and, with the sounds of the city still ringing in their ears, to listen to the voices of the trees and the birds.
I sent a porter to the inn for a fly; and when it arrived, and the luggage was packed on and about it, we started.