Fortinbras rose, kissed her on the forehead and went forth to his day’s work of dealing out happiness to a clamouring world.
CHAPTER XIII
LUCILLA MERRITON had much money, a kind heart and a pretty little talent in painting. The last secured her admittance to the circle of art-students round about the Rue Bonaparte, the second made her popular among them and the money enabled her to obey any reasonable dictate of the kind heart aforesaid. When those who were her intimates, mainly hard-working and none too opulent English girls, took her to task for her luxurious way of living, and pointed out that it was not in keeping with the Spartan, makeshift traditions of the Latin Quarter, and that it differentiated her too much from her fellows, she replied, with the frankness of her country, first, that she saw no sense in pretending to be other than she was, second, that in the atmosphere of luxury to which she had been born, she was herself, for whatever that self was worth; and thirdly, that any masquerading as a liver of the simple life would choke all the agreeable qualities out of her. When, looking round her amateur studio, they objected that she did not take her art seriously, she cordially agreed.
“I take what you call my art,” she would say, “just as it suits me. I can command too many things in the world for me to sacrifice them to the mediocre result I can get out of a paint-brush and a bit of canvas. I shall never need paint for money, and if I did I’m sure I shouldn’t earn any. But I love painting for its own sake, and I have enough talent to make it worth while to have good instruction in technique, so that my pictures shall more or less satisfy myself and not set my friends’ teeth on edge. And that’s why I’m here.”
She was a wealthy vagabond of independent fortune inherited from her mother long since deceased, with no living ties save her father, a railway director in America, now married to a young wife, a school-mate of her own, whom, since her childhood, she had peculiarly abhorred. But in the world, which lay wide open to her, videlicet the civilised nations of the two hemispheres, she had innumerable friends. No human will pretended to control her actions. She was as free to live in Rosario as in Buda-Pesth; in Nairobi as in Nijni Novgorod. For the last two or three years she had elected to establish her headquarters in Paris and study painting. But why the latter process should involve a hard bed in a shabby room and dreadful meals at the Petit Cornichon, she could never understand. Occasionally, on days of stress at the atélier, she did lunch at the Petit Cornichon. It was convenient, and, as she was young and thirsty for real draughts of life, the chatter and hubbub of insensate ambitions afforded her both interest and amusement; but she found the food execrable and the universal custom of cleaning knife, fork, spoon and plate before using them exceedingly disgusting. Yet, being a lady born and bred, she performed the objectionable rite in the most gracious way in the world; and when it came to comradeship, then her democratic traditions asserted themselves. Her student friends ranged the social gamut. If the wearer were a living spirit, she regarded broken boots and threadbare garments merely as an immaterial accident of fortune, like a broken nose or an amputated limb. The flat on the Boulevard St. Germain was the haven of many a hungry girl and boy. And they found their way thither (as far as Lucilla was concerned) not because they were hungry, but because that which lay deep in their souls had won her accurate recognition.
By way of digression, an essential difference in point of view between English and Americans may here be noted. If an Englishman has reason to admire a tinker and make friends with him, he will leave his own respectable sphere and enter that of the tinker, and, in some humble haunt of tinkerdom, where he can remain incognito, will commune with his crony over pots of abominable and digestion-racking ale. The instinct of the American, in sworn brotherhood with a tinker, is, on the other hand, to lift the tinker to his own habitation of delight. He will desire to take him into a saloon which he himself frequents, fill him up with champagne and provide him with the best, biggest and strongest cigar that money can buy. In both cases appear the special defects of national qualities. The Englishman goes to the tinker’s boozing ken (thereby, incidentally, putting the tinker at his ease) because he would be ashamed of being seen by any of his own clan in a tinker’s company. The American does not care a hang for being seen with the tinker; he wants to give his friend a good time; but, incidentally, he has no intuitive regard for the tinker’s feelings, predilections and timidities.
From which disquisition it may be understood how Lucilla played Lady Bountiful without the slightest consciousness of doing so. She played it so well, with regard to Félise, as to make that young woman in the course of a day or two her slave and worshipper. She shewed her the sights of Paris, Versailles, the Galeries de Lafayette, the Tomb of Napoleon, Poiret’s, the Salon d’Hiver, the Panthéon and Cartier’s in the Rue de la Paix. With the aid of pins and scissors and Céleste, she also attired her in an evening frock and under the nominal protection of an agreeable young compatriot from the Embassy took her to dine at the Café de Paris and then to the Théâtre du Gymnase. A great, soft-cushioned, smooth, noiseless car carried them luxuriously through the infinite streets; and when they were at home it seemed to await them night and day by the kerb of the Boulevard Saint Germain. Lucilla set the head of the little country mouse awhirl with sensations. Félise revered her as a goddess, and whispered in awe the Christian name which she was commanded to use.
A breathless damsel, with a jumble of conflicting scraps of terror and delight instead of a mind, her arms full of an adored Persian kitten and an adoring Pekinese spaniel, after a couple of days’ flashing course through France, was brought in the gathering dusk, with a triumphant sweep up the hill, to the familiar front door of the Hôtel des Grottes. Baptiste, green-aproned, gaped as he saw her, and, scuttling indoors, shouted at the top of his voice:
“Monsieur, monsieur, c’est mademoiselle!”