CHAPTER XXIII
THREE GUIDES
It was only by intuition, and by asking many questions, that at times I could extract the significance of certain places from Barfleur as quickly as I wished. He was always reticent or a little cryptic in his allusions. In this instance I gathered rapidly however that this bar was a very extraordinary little restaurant presided over by a woman of a most pleasant and practical type. She could not have been much over forty—buxom, good-looking, self-reliant, efficient. She moved about the two rooms which constituted her restaurant, in so far as the average diner was concerned, with an air of considerable social importance. Her dresses, as I noticed on my several subsequent visits, were always sober, but in excellent taste. About this time of day the two rooms were a little dark, the electric lights being reserved for the more crowded hours. Yet there were always a few people here. This evening when we entered I noticed a half-dozen men and three or four young women lounging here in a preliminary way, consuming apéritifs and chatting sociably. I made out by degrees that the mistress of this place had a following of a kind, in the Parisian scheme of things—that certain men and women came here for reasons of good-fellowship; and that she would take a certain type of struggling maiden, if she were good-looking and ambitious and smart, under her wing. The girl would have to know how to dress well, to be able to carry herself with an air; and when money was being spent very freely by an admirer it might as well be spent at this bar on occasion as anywhere else. There was obviously an entente cordiale between Madame G. and all the young women who came in here. They seemed so much at home that it was quite like a family party. Everybody appeared to be genial, cheerful, and to know everybody else. To enter here was to feel as though you had lived in Paris for years.
While we are sitting at a table sipping a brandy and soda, enter Mme. de B., the brisk, genial, sympathetic French personage whose voice on the instant gave me a delightful impression of her. It was the loveliest voice I have ever heard, soft and musical, a colorful voice touched with both gaiety and sadness. Her eyes were light blue, her hair brown and her manner sinuous and insinuating. She seemed to have the spirit of a delightfully friendly collie dog or child and all the gaiety and alertness that goes with either.
After I had been introduced, she laughed, and putting aside her muff and stole, shook herself into a comfortable position in a corner and accepted a brandy and soda. She was so interested for the moment, exchanging whys and wherefores with Barfleur, that I had a chance to observe her keenly. In a moment she turned to me and wanted to know whether I knew either of two American authors whom she knew—men of considerable repute. Knowing them both very well, it surprised me to think that she knew them. She seemed, from the way she spoke, to have been on the friendliest terms with both of them; and any one by looking at her could have understood why they should have taken such an interest in her.
“Now, you know, that Mistaire N., he is very nice. I was very fond of him. And Mistaire R., he is clever, don’t you think?”
I admitted at once that they were both very able men and that I was glad that she knew them. She informed me that she had known Mr. R. and Mr. N. in London and that she had there perfected her English, which was very good indeed. Barfleur explained in full who I was and how long I would be in Paris and that he had written her from America because he wanted her to show me some attention during my stay in Paris.
If Mme. de B. had been of a somewhat more calculating type I fancy that, with her intense charm of face and manner and her intellect and voice, she would have been very successful. I gained the impression that she had been on the stage in some small capacity; but she had been too diffident—not really brazen enough—for the grim world in which the French actress rises. I soon found that Mme. de B. was a charming blend of emotion, desire, and refinement which had strayed into the wrong field. She would have done better in literature or music or art; and she seemed fitted by her moods and her understanding to be a light in any one of them or all. Some temperaments are so—missing by a fraction what they would give all the world to have. It is the little things that do it—the fractions, the bits, the capacity for taking pains in little things that make, as so many have said, the difference between success and failure and it is true.
I shall never forget how she looked at me, quite in the spirit of a gay uncertain child, and how quickly she made me feel that we would get along very well together. “Why, yes,” she said quite easily in her soft voice, “I will go about with you, although I would not know what is best to see. But I shall be here, and if you want to come for me we can see things together.” Suddenly she reached over and took my hand and squeezed it genially, as though to seal the bargain. We had more drinks to celebrate this rather festive occasion; and then Mme. de B., promising to join us at the theater, went away. It was high time then to dress for dinner; and so we returned to the hotel. We ate a companionable meal, watching the Parisian and his lady love (or his wife) arrive in droves and dine with that gusto and enthusiasm which is so characteristic of the French.
When we came out of this theater at half after eleven, Mme. de B. was anxious to return to her apartment, and Barfleur was anxious to give me an extra taste of the varied café life of Paris in order that I might be able to contrast and compare intelligently. “If you know where they are and see whether you like them, you can tell whether you want to see any more of them—which I hope you won’t,” said he wisely, leading the way through a swirling crowd that was for all the world like a rushing tide of the sea.