Chapter 42
"No reason at all."
"Why, then I will. I believe the captain would have liked me to get a bit of a blow."
"Anything to declare?" the customs official asked at Boulogne.
"I declare I'm enjoying myself," said Mrs. Gainsborough, looking round her and beaming at France.
CHAPTER X
When she once more landed on French soil, Sylvia, actuated by a cla.s.sic piety, desired to visit her mother's grave. She would have preferred to go to Lille by herself, for she lacked the showman's instinct; but her companions were so horrified at the notion of being left to themselves in Paris until she rejoined them, that in the end she had to take them with her.
The sight of the old house and the faces of some of the older women in the _quartier_ conjured up the past so vividly for Sylvia that she could not bring herself to make any inquiries about the rest of her family. It seemed as if she must once more look at Lille from her mother's point of view and maintain the sanct.i.ty of private life against the curiosity or criticism of neighbors. She did not wish to hear the details of her father's misdoing or perhaps be condoled with over Valentine. The simplest procedure would have been to lay a wreath upon the grave and depart again. This she might have done if Mrs. Gainsborough's genial inquisitiveness about her relatives had not roused in herself a wish to learn something about them. She decided to visit her eldest sister in Brussels, leaving it to chance if she still lived where Sylvia had visited her twelve years ago.
"Brussels," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Well, that sounds familiar, anyway.
Though I suppose the sprout-gardens are all built over nowadays. Ah dear!"
The building over of her father's nursery-garden and of many other green spots she had known in London always drew a tear from Mrs. Gainsborough, who was inclined to attribute most of human sorrow to the utilitarian schemes of builders.
"Yes, they found the Belgian hares ate up all the sprouts," Sylvia said.
"And talking of hair," she went on, "what's the matter with yours?"
"Ah, well, there! Now I meant to say nothing about it. But I've left me mahogany wash at home. There's a calamity!"
"You'd better come out with me and buy another bottle," Sylvia advised.
"You'll never get one here," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "This is a wash, not a dye, you must remember. It doesn't tint the hair; it just brings up the color and gives it a nice gloss."
"If that's all it does, I'll lend you my shoe-polish. Go along, you wicked old fraud, and don't talk to me about washes. I can see the white hairs coming out like stars."
Sylvia found Elene in Brussels, and was amazed to see how much she resembled her mother nowadays. M. Durand, her husband, had prospered and he now owned a large confectioner's shop in the heart of the city, above which Madame Durand had started a pension for economical tourists. Mrs.
Gainsborough could not get over the fact that her hostess did not speak English; it struck her as unnatural that Sylvia should have a sister who could only speak French. The little Durands were a more difficult problem. She did not so much mind feeling awkward with grown-up people through having to sit dumb, but children stared at her so, if she said nothing; and if she talked, they stared at her still more; she kept feeling that she ought to stroke them or pat them, which might offend their mother. She found ultimately that they were best amused by her taking out two false teeth she had, one of which once was lost, because the eldest boy would play dice with them.
Elene gave Sylvia news of the rest of the family, though, since all the four married sisters were in different towns in France and she had seen none of them for ten years, it was not very fresh news. Valentine, in whose career Sylvia was most interested, was being very well _entretenue_ by a _ma.r.s.eillais_ who had bought her an apartment that included a porcelain-tiled bath-room; she might be considered lucky, for the man with whom she had left Lille had been a rascal. It happened that her news of Valentine was fresh and authentic, because a _lilleoise_ who lived in Bruxelles had recently been obliged to
Sylvia being half English already, it might not interest her so much, but for herself to know she had English blood _l'avait beaucoup impressione_, so many English tourists came to her pension.
Sylvia looked at the daguerreotype of her grandmother, a gla.s.s faintly bloomed, the likeness of a ghost indeed. She then had loved an Englishman; her mother, too; herself.... Sylvia packed the daguerreotype out of sight and turned to look at a golden shawl of a material rather like crepe de Chine, which had been used to wrap up their mother when she was a baby. Would Sylvia like it? It was no use to Elene, too old and frail and faded. Sylvia stayed in Brussels for a week and left with many promises to return soon. She was glad she had paid the visit; for it had given back to her the sense of continuity which in the s.h.i.+fting panorama of her life she had lost, so that she had come to regard herself as an unreal person, an exception in humanity, an emotional freak; this separation from the rest of the world had been irksome to Sylvia since she had discovered the possibility of her falling in love, because it was seeming the cause of her not being loved. Henceforth she would meet man otherwise than with defiance or accusation in her eyes; she, too, perhaps would meet a lover thus.
Sylvia folded up the golden shawl to put it at the bottom of her trunk; figuratively, she wrapped up in it her memories, tender, gay, sorrowful, vile all together.
"Soon be in Paris, shall we?" said Mrs. Gainsborough, when the train reached the eastern suburbs. "It makes one feel quite naughty, doesn't it? The captain was always going to take me, but we never went, somehow. What's that? There's the Eiffel Tower? So it is, upon my word, and just what it looks like in pictures. Not a bit different. I hope it won't fall down while we're still in Paris. Nice set-out that would be.
I've always been afraid of sky accidents since a friend of mine, a Mrs.
Ewings, got stuck in the Great Wheel at Earl's Court with a man who started undressing himself. It was all right, as it happened, because he only wanted to wave his s.h.i.+rt to his wife, who was waiting for him down below, so as she shouldn't get anxious, but it gave Mrs. Ewings a nasty turn. Two hours she was stuck with nothing in her bag but a box of little liver pills, which made her mouth water, she said, she was that hungry. She _thinks_ she'd have eaten them if she'd have been alone; but the man, who was an undertaker from Wandsworth, told her a lot of interesting stories about corpses, and that kept her mind occupied till the wheel started going round again, and the Exhibition gave her soup and ten s.h.i.+llings compensation, which made a lot of people go up in it on the chance of being stuck."
It was strange, Sylvia thought, that she should be as ignorant of Paris as Mrs. Gainsborough, but somehow the three of them would manage to enjoy themselves. Lily was more nearly vivacious than she had ever known her.
"Quite saucy," Mrs. Gainsborough vowed. "But there, we're all young, and you soon get used to the funny people you see in France. After all, they're foreigners. We ought to feel sorry for them."
"I say steady, Mrs. Gainsborough," Lily murmured, with a frown. "Some of these people in the carriage may speak English."
"Speak English?" Mrs. Gainsborough repeated. "You don't mean to tell me they'd go on jabbering to one another in French if they could speak Englis.h.!.+ What an idea!"
A young man who had got into the compartment at Chantilly had been casting glances of admiration at Lily ever since, and it was on account of him that she had warned Mrs. Gainsborough. He was a slim, dark young man dressed by an English tailor, very diffident for a Frenchman, but when Sylvia began to speculate upon the choice of a hotel he could no longer keep silence and asked in English if he could be of any help.
When Sylvia replied to him in French, he was much surprised:
_"Mais vous etes francaise!"_
_"Je suis du pays de la lune,"_ Sylvia said.
"Now don't encourage the young fellow to gabble in French," Mrs.
Gainsborough protested. "It gives me the pins and needles to hear you.
You ought to encourage people to speak English, if they want to, I'm sure."
The young Frenchman smiled at this and offered his card to Sylvia, whom he evidently accepted as the head of the party. She read, "Hector Ozanne," and smiled for the heroic first name; somehow he did not look like Hector and because he was so modest she presented him to Lily to make him happy.
"I am enchanted to meet a type of English beauty," he said. "You must forgive my sincerity, which arises only from admiration. Madame," he went on, turning to Mrs. Gainsborough, "I am honored to meet you."
Mrs. Gainsborough, who was not quite sure how to deal with such politeness, became fl.u.s.tered and dropped her bag. Ozanne and she both plunged for it simultaneously and b.u.mped their heads; upon this painful salute a general friendliness was established.
"I am a bachelor," said Ozanne. "I have nothing to occupy myself, and if I might be permitted to a.s.sist you in a research for an apartment I shall be very elated."
Sylvia decided in favor of rooms on the _rive gauche_. She felt it was a conventional taste, but held to her opinion against Ozanne's objections.
"But I have an apartment in the Rue Montpensier, with a view of the Palais Royal. I do not live there now myself. I beseech you to make me the pleasure to occupy it. It is so very good, the view of the garden.
And if you like an ancient house, it is very ancient. Do you concur?"
"And where will you go?" Sylvia asked.
"I live always in my club. For me it would be a big advantage, I a.s.sure you."
"We should have to pay rent," said Sylvia, quickly.
"The rent will be one thousand a year."
"G.o.d have mercy upon us!" Mrs. Gainsborough gasped. "A thousand a year?
Why, the man must think that we're the royal family broken out from Windsor Castle on the randan."
"Shut up, you silly old thing," said Sylvia. "He's asking nothing at all. Francs, not pounds. _Vous etes trop gentil pour nous, Monsieur."_
_"Alors, c'est entendu?"_
_"Mais oui."_
_"Bon! Nous y irons ensemble tout de suite, n'est-ce pas?"_
The apartment was really charming. From the windows one could see the priests with their breviaries muttering up and down the old garden of the Palais Royal; and, as in all gardens in the heart of a great city, many sorts of men and women were resting there in the sunlight. Ozanne invited them to dine with him that night and left them to unpack.