THIRD REFLECTION
In the Métro station of the Étoile, Ventrillon dusted his patent-leather shoes with his pocket handkerchief, shot his cuffs, tilted the hat of eight reflections to its most killing angle, and then sallied forth into the Avenue Victor-Hugo. Unfortunately, custom would not permit his wearing the hat in the salon of Mme. Sutrin. As he reluctantly surrendered it at the entrance his ears were assailed by an incredible noise, which increased in discordant violence as he neared the door of the salon.
The large room was crowded. The shining faces of a group of perspiring American blacks grinned with yellow teeth and rolled their white eyeballs above a variety of strange instruments that the Negroes were tormenting with wild, angular abandon of elbows and knees. To the barbarous compulsion of the bizarre rhythm a number of couples were moving about the floor, poising and posturing with the curious exotic dignity of the Parisian fox trot. In fashionable dishevelment smiling-eyed ladies sat about on chairs and ottomans, drinking tea; and miraculously tailored gentlemen of figures ranging from the concave to the convex stood balancing teacups in saucers.
The grace of his embarrassment fulfilling somehow the perfection of his garments, Ventrillon made an exquisite figure against the futurist splendour of Mme. Sutrin’s flamingo and purple portières. She saw him standing overwhelmed in the doorway, uttered a hoarse little shriek of delight and, in her tight gown of magenta velvet rushed with a sort of oscillating precipitation to take his hands. Names of the mighty poured into his ears as she introduced him at random to everybody within reach. But he was not long abashed. He was never long abashed. And, besides, to any man, as a wise American has said, the consciousness that he is well dressed is a consolation greater even than the consolations of religion.
Mme. Sutrin left him to the mercies of a group watching the dancing from the end of the room opposite the jazz band.
“This noise,” began Ventrillon, promptly, to a negligible lady beside him, “is it music?”
“Ah, no, monsieur,” confessed the lady; “but it is the fashion.”
“Then I must like it,” said Ventrillon.
“One has not met you before, I believe, monsieur?” said the lady.
“I have not been a success before,” said Ventrillon.
The lady laughed.
“Then you do not know anybody. I shall have to inform you. The little woman with the red hair near the door is Madame Ribot, the wife of the journalist. She has a wicked tongue; it is well to cultivate her. Her husband controls public opinion, and she controls him. The man behind her is the Minister of Public Services——”
A passing couple jostled the minister’s arm and, awkwardly, attempting to save it, he dropped his teacup. Crimson even to the barren scalp of his head, he stooped to mop with his handkerchief at the spilled tea in the lap of Mme. Ribot. The little red-haired woman smiled, clenched her teeth, and bided her time.
“Madame,” said Ventrillon, “I sit at your feet and learn. I had never before known that a Minister of Public Services could drop a teacup.”
The lady laughed again.
“Monsieur,” she said, “you are delicious. Look! The tall blonde who enters is the Belletaille——”
With a resounding metallic crash, the jazz band happened at that moment to stop short. Short of breath, the dancing couples separated. In the gap of the portières stood a lean, hawk-nosed woman in black, with a dead-white face of astonishing and fascinating ugliness. One shoulder was held higher than the other, one chalky hand rested with fingers wide-spread upon her uncorseted hip, and the other caressed at her waist the enormous bunch of scarlet amaryllis without which she was never seen. Everybody turned to look. The Belletaille, as usual, had achieved an entrance.
“’Allo evreebodee!” she cried in English, showing all her fine white teeth. “Ah, there you are, my Marianne! Kiss me! And, oh, my dear Madame Sutrin, how pleased I am to come! C’est épatant! A jazz band! Bon dieu, but it is ravishing! Aha! Théodule—ça gaz?” She had called the Minister of Public Services Théodule and asked him how he was in slang. “That,” thought Ventrillon, “is success.”
Taking for granted that everybody was overwhelmed with delight at seeing her, on she came, with a bow here and a handshake there, until in the centre of the room she halted abruptly.
“Théodule,” she cried, “I forgot to tell Madame Hortense to send up that gown this evening. Telephone her for me. And hasten, or the shop will be closed.” The Minister of Public Services obeyed and left the room.
Then she turned and on she came again. With the sinuous step of the walk she had learned at the Conservatoire, on and on, smiling, smiling, her eyelids painted sky blue, her alizarin lips smiling apart like something unreal, jingle by jingle, faintly clicking her high heels on the parquetry, on and on, smiling always, came the great Gabrielle Belletaille of the Opéra Comique.
Ventrillon had never before in his life made an effort to please, and now his mind refused to work. In fact, it was scattered into tiny little bits all over the salon of Mme. Sutrin. “What a marvellous subject to paint!” was the only idea his devastated brain could hold. He could do naught but stare at the extraordinary creature and breathe with difficulty. She was almost upon him.
Now she was speaking to him in that golden voice, a single intonation of which could break a thousand hearts, and was extending one of those chalk-white hands, a single gesture of which could from a thousand bodies draw a thousand souls.
“And this,” she was saying, “must be the Adonis of whom Madame Sutrin spoke.”
Ventrillon grasped his impudence and yearned for his breath and his voice; but everything he could conceive was either too long or too obvious, and with every fraction of a second it was swiftly becoming too late. One of those terrible tea-silences had fallen when nobody can think of anything more to say.
“Ah, Madame Venus,” he heard his voice stammer at last, resounding in his ears above the tinkle of teaspoons, as if he had been shouting, “n-n-not Adonis; for that f-foolish Adonis ran away!”
He saw her narrow her eyes as she looked at him, and heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Oh, my God!” thought Ventrillon, “I am ruined! I have gone too far!”
“Audacious!” she murmured. “I like audacity.” She flashed all her teeth upon him and for the moment blinded him. “Come and talk to me.”
She sat down, letting her long arms drift from the arms of her chair. “I hope you don’t fox trot. I refuse to fox trot. It is so vulgar. When that Fanny Max began to fox trot, the Belletaille ceased. Now tell me all about yourself. I am a person in whom one can confide. Everybody tells me everything. I am always so interested in other people. It is my character. That is why I am never bored. Only the stupid are bored. And then my life has been so interesting, so full of such strange coincidences and such fascinating episodes.” Then, before allowing him one word of the telling all about himself, or herself the time to catch her breath, she shrieked the length of the room to the Minister of Public Services, who had at that moment entered again, “What did she say, Théodule?”
“She will send the gown at once,” said the minister, mopping his forehead. “But what a devil of a time I had getting her! Telephonists have lost all respect. I did not remember the number and I did not want to waste the minutes, so I said to the telephonist, ‘I know, my girl, it is forbidden to call without a number, but this is the Minister of Public Services who speaks.’ And figure to yourselves what she says! ‘Flute alors!’ she says. ‘Go on with you! That is what they all say!’”
“Oh,” laughed red-haired little Mme. Ribot, “that is exactly what happened to Fanny Max, the new soprano everybody is talking about, you know.” Ventrillon saw Mme. Sutrin give the little woman a warning glance, and knew that Belletaille had stiffened at the mention of the name. But Mme. Ribot wore a gown which had been ruined by the Minister of Public Services, and she was about to make him pay through the nose. Nothing could have stopped her. “Excepting that she said she was the wife of the Minister of Public Services; and the telephone girl said——”
Mme. Sutrin, having not the vaguest idea what that telephone girl had said, but knowing Mme. Ribot’s tongue only too well, made a desperate gesture to the leader of the jazz band, hoping to drown it in cacophony. The Negro had gone out for a drink. Mme. Sutrin subsided hopelessly.
“The telephone girl said,” Mme. Ribot continued calmly and deliberately—“she said, ‘Oh, the pig! He has deceived me!’”
The minister went a violent shade of royal purple.
“And that very day,” the shameless red-haired little creature went on, “Fanny Max went to the telephone bureau with a riding whip, and it required six men to eject her. Ministers of public services must be fascinating.” She looked up wickedly at the minister, who looked down at her in turn as if he would have liked to bite her. She was obtaining royal indemnities for her gown.
“Oh, spare me!” cried the Belletaille. “I suffocate! All one hears is Fanny Max! Fanny Max! Fanny Max! The newspapers are full of her. Why people will discuss such a creature I cannot understand. Such vulgarity! It makes me ill. And she will do anything for notoriety. I abhor notoriety myself. I loathe notoriety. And voice? It is like the screech of a rusty hinge. Really, Madame Sutrin, if we are to have nothing but Fanny Max——”
“I assure you, madame,” said the minister to Mme. Ribot, striving to keep his rage from his voice, “that I have not the honour of knowing Mademoiselle Max——”
“Oh,” she cried quickly, “never fear! Your wife will not hear it from me.”
“Ugh!” said the Belletaille to Ventrillon, “it continues! It is disgusting! It is unspeakable! It is——”
“Mademoiselle,” interrupted Ventrillon, “why speak of her? She exists only to be ignored by you.”
The Belletaille gave him her grateful full face. “I knew it the moment I saw you,” she declared. “You are a mystic, and I think mysticism is so fascinating. You have the eyes. I am a mystic myself. Everybody notices it. Sometimes I think we mystics alone know the true soul of things. What a truth that is, ‘She exists only to be ignored by me!’ You are a painter, aren’t you? It is these young ones, these young mystics, who do the great things. Why do you not paint my portrait?”
Ventrillon gulped.
“I dared not ask it,” he said.
“Then that is settled. We shall begin to-morrow afternoon. But come, take me to my car. It is evident that these surroundings are not for us. Ah, Madame Sutrin,” she said sweetly as she took her hostess’s hand, “it has been so interesting! One finds so many people at your house one would never dream of meeting anywhere else.”
When she passed the minister, Ventrillon heard her hiss something into his face. It sounded extraordinarily like, “Never speak to me again!” But Ventrillon was never sure of this, for the jazz band had begun anew. Nevertheless, he distinctly saw little Mme. Ribot look up from under her red hair to observe this brief passage, and then down to contemplate a large wet stain on her satin skirt with a smile of enormous satisfaction.
“After all,” reflected Ventrillon, “the great are all ridiculous. It is easier than I had thought.”