CHAPTER XXIV
“THE POISON FLOWER”
IT was after this night that Barfleur took his departure for London for two weeks, where business affairs were calling him during which time I was to make myself as idle and gay as I might alone or with the individuals to whom he had introduced me or to whom I had introductions direct. There was so much that I wished to see and that he did not care to see over again with me, having seen it all before—the Musée de Cluny, for instance, the Louvre, the Luxembourg and so on.
The next afternoon after a more or less rambling day I saw him off for London and then I plunged into this treasure world alone.
One of the things that seriously impressed me was the never-failing singing air of the city which was everywhere; and another the peculiarly moody atmosphere of the cemetery of Père-Lachaise—that wonderful world of celebrated dead—who crowd each other like the residents of a narrow city and who make a veritable fanfare of names. What a world! One whole day I idled here over the tombs of Balzac, Daudet, De Musset, Chopin, Rachel, Abélard and Héloise—a long, long list of celebrities. My brain fairly reeled with the futility of life—and finally I came away immensely sad. Another day I visited Versailles and all its splendor with one of the most interesting and amusing Americans I met abroad, a publisher by the name of H——, who regaled me with his own naïve experiences. I fairly choked at times over his quaint, slangy, amusing comments on things as when at Versailles, in the chambers of Marie Antoinette, he discovered a small secret stair only to remark, “There’s where Louis XVI took a sneak often enough no doubt,” or on one of the towers of Notre Dame when to a third person who was present he commented, “There’s your gargoyles, old sox!” Think of the artistic irreverence of it! Concerning a group of buildings which related to the Beaux-Arts I believe he inquired, “What’s the bunch of stuff to the right?” and so it went. But the beauty of Versailles—its stately artificiality!—how it all comes back.
After two weeks in which I enjoyed myself as much as I ever hope to, studying out the charm and color of Paris for myself, Barfleur returned fresh, interested, ready for the Riviera, ready for more of Paris, ready indeed for anything, I said to myself once more, when I saw him—and I was very glad to see him indeed.
The personality of Barfleur supplies a homey quality of comfortable companionship. He is so full of a youthful zest to live, and so keen after the shows and customs of the world. I have never pondered why he is so popular with women, or that his friends in different walks of life constitute so great a company. He seems to have known thousands of all sorts, and to be at home under all conditions. That persistent, unchanging atmosphere of “All is well with me,” to maintain which is as much a duty as a tradition with him, makes his presence a constant delight.
We were soon joined by a small party of friends thereafter: Sir Scorp, who was bound for an extended stay on the Riviera, a sociologist, who was abroad on an important scientific investigation, and the representative of an American publishing house, who was coming to Paris to waylay Mr. Morgan Shuster, late of Persia, and secure his book. This goodly company descended upon the Hotel Normandy late one Friday afternoon; and it was planned that a party of the whole was to be organized the following night to dine at the Café de Paris and then to make a round of the lesser known and more picturesque of Parisian resorts.
Before this grand pilgrimage to the temples of vice and excitement, however, Barfleur and I spent a remarkable evening wandering from one restaurant to another in an effort to locate a certain Mlle. Rillette, a girl who, he had informed me when we first came to Paris, had been one of the most interesting figures of the Folies stage. Four or five years before she had held at the Folies-Bergère much the same position now recently attained by Mistinguett who was just then enthralling Paris—in other words, she was the sensation of that stormy world of art and romance of which these restaurants are a part. She was more than that. She had a wonderful mezzo-soprano voice of great color and richness and a spirit for dancing that was Greek in its quality. Barfleur was most anxious that I should get at least a glimpse of this exceptional Parisian type—the real spirit of this fast world, your true artistic poison flower, your lovely hooded cobra—before she should be too old, or too wretched, to be interesting.
We started out to visit G.’s Bar, the Bar Fysher, the Rat Mort, Palmyr’s Bar, the Grelot, the Rabelais, in fact the whole list of restaurants and show-places where on occasion she might be expected to be seen. On the way Barfleur recounted bits of her interesting history, her marriages, divorces, vices, drug-habits, a strange category of tendencies that sometimes affect the most vigorous and eager of human temperaments.
At one café, on this expedition, quite by accident apparently, we encountered Miss X., whom I had not seen since we left Fishguard, and who was here in Paris doing her best to outvie the women of the gay restaurants in the matter of her dresses, her hats, and her beauty. I must say she presented a ravishing spectacle—quite as wonderful as any of the other women who were to be seen here; but she lacked, as I was to note, the natural vivacity of the French. We Americans, in spite of our high spirits and our healthy enthusiasm for life, are nevertheless a blend of the English, the German, and some of the sedate nations of the north; and we are inclined to a physical and mental passivity which is not common to the Latins. This Miss X., vivid creature that she was, did not have the spiritual vibration which accompanies the French women. So far as spirit was concerned, she seemed superior to most of the foreign types present—but the French women are naturally gayer, their eyes brighter, their motions lighter. She gave us at once an account of her adventures since I had seen her—where she had been living, what places she had visited, and what a good time she was having. I could not help marveling at the disposition which set above everything else in the world the privilege of moving in this peculiar realm which fascinated her so much. From a conventional point of view, much of what she did was, to say the least of it, unusual, but she did not trouble about this. As she told me on the Mauretania, all she hoped for was to become a woman of Machiavellian finesse, and to have some money. If she had money and attained to real social wisdom, conventional society could go to the devil; for the adventuress, according to her, was welcome everywhere—that is, anywhere she would care to go. She did not expect to retain her beauty entirely; but she did expect to have some money, and meanwhile to live brilliantly as she deemed that she was now doing. Her love of amusement was quite as marked as ever, and her comments on the various women of her class as hard and accurate as they were brilliant. I remember her saying of one woman, with an easy sweep of her hand, “Like a willow, don’t you think?”—and of another, “She glows like a ruby.” It was true—fine character delineation.
At Maxim’s, an hour later, she decided to go home, so we took her to her hotel and then resumed our pursuit of Mlle. Rillette. After much wandering we finally came upon her, about four in the morning, in one of those showy pleasure resorts that I have so frequently described.
“Ah, yes, there she is,” Barfleur exclaimed. I looked to a distant table to see the figure he indicated—that of a young girl seemingly not more than twenty-four or twenty-five, a white silk neckerchief tied about her brown hair, her body clothed in a rather nondescript costume for a world so showy as this. Most of the women wore evening clothes. Rillette had on a skirt of light brown wool, a white shirtwaist open in the front and the collar turned down showing her pretty neck. Her skirt was short, and I noticed that she had pleasing ankles and pretty feet and her sleeves were short, showing a solid forearm. Before she noticed Barfleur we saw her take a slender girl in black for a partner and dance, with others, in the open space between the tables which circled the walls. I studied her with interest because of Barfleur’s description, because of the fact that she had been married twice, and because the physical and spiritual ruin of a dozen girls was, falsely or not, laid at her door. Her face did not suggest the depravity which her career would indicate, although it was by no means ruddy; but she seemed to scorn rouge. Her eyes—eyes are always significant in a forceful personage—were large and vague and brown, set beneath a wide, full forehead—very wonderful eyes. She appeared, in her idle security and profound nonchalance, like a figure out of the Revolution or the Commune. She would have been magnificent in a riot—marching up a Parisian street, her white band about her brown hair, carrying a knife, a gun, or a flag. She would have had the courage, too; for it was so plain that life had lost much of its charm and she nearly all of her caring. She came over when her dance was done, having seen Barfleur, and extended an indifferent hand. He told me, after their light conversation in French, that he had chided her to the effect that her career was ruining her once lovely voice. “I shall find it again at the next corner,” she said, and walked smartly away.
“Some one should write a novel about a woman like that,” he explained urgently. “She ought to be painted. It is amazing the sufficiency of soul that goes with that type. There aren’t many like her. She could be the sensation again of Paris if she wanted to—would try. But she won’t. See what she said of her voice just now.” He shook his head. I smiled approvingly, for obviously the appearance of the woman—her full, rich eyes—bore him out.
She was a figure of distinction in this restaurant world; for many knew her and kept track of her. I watched her from time to time talking with the guests of one table and another, and the chemical content which made her exceptional was as obvious as though she were a bottle and bore a label. To this day she stands out in my mind in her simple dress and indifferent manner as perhaps the one forceful, significant figure that I saw in all the cafés of Paris or elsewhere.
I looked to a distant table to see the figure he indicated
I should like to add here, before I part forever with this curious and feverish Parisian restaurant world, that my conclusion had been, after much and careful observation, that it was too utterly feverish, artificial and exotic not to be dangerous and grimly destructive if not merely touched upon at long intervals. This world of champagne drinkers was apparently interested in but two things—the flare and glow of the restaurants, which were always brightly lighted and packed with people—and women. In the last analysis women, the young women of easy virtue, were the glittering attraction; and truly one might say they were glittering. Fine feathers make fine birds, and nowhere more so than in Paris. But there were many birds who would have been fine in much less showy feathers. In many instances they craved and secured a demure simplicity which was even more destructive than the flaring costumes of the demi-monde. It was strange to see American innocence—the products of Petoskey, Michigan, and Hannibal, Missouri, cheek by jowl with the most daring and the most vicious women which the great metropolis could produce. I did not know until some time later how hard some of these women were, how schooled in vice, how weary of everything save this atmosphere of festivity and the privilege of wearing beautiful clothes.
Most people come here for a night or two, or a month or two, or once in a year or so; and then return to the comparatively dull world from which they emanated—which is fortunate. If they were here a little while this deceptive world of delight would lose all its glamour; but a very few days and you see through the dreary mechanism by which it is produced; the brow-beating of shabby waiters by greedy managers, the extortionate charges and tricks by which money is lured from the pockets of the unwary, the wretched hallrooms and garrets from which some of these butterflies emanate to wing here in seeming delight and then disappear. It was a scorching world, and it displayed vice as an upper and a nether millstone between which youth and beauty is ground or pressed quickly to a worthless mass. I would defy anybody to live in this atmosphere so long as five years and not exhibit strongly the tell-tale marks of decay. When the natural glow of youth has gone comes the powder and paint box for the face, belladonna for the eyes, rouge for the lips, palms, and the nails, and perfumes and ornament and the glister of good clothing; but underneath it all one reads the weariness of the eye, the sickening distaste for bargaining hour by hour and day by day, the cold mechanism of what was once natural, instinctive coquetry. You feel constantly that so many of these demi-mondaines would sell their souls for one last hour of delight and then gladly take poison, as so many of them do, to end it all. Consumption, cocaine and opium maintain their persistent toll. This is a furnace of desire—this Montmartre district—and it burns furiously with a hard, white-hot flame until there is nothing left save black cinders and white ashes. Those who can endure its consuming heat are welcome to its wonders until emotion and feeling and beauty are no more.