Katherine Keenum (28 page)

“Mama only wants me to do things she thinks will be a credit to her.” Jeanette wallowed a moment longer in her misery, then sat up heavily and sighed. “All the same, she’s right—I shouldn’t have borrowed from you. Papa’s mad, too, or I would have heard more from him by now. I shouldn’t have got you caught in the middle, you of all people, Cousin Effie.” She took Effie’s hand and laid it against her cheek.

The show of loyalty turned Effie fiercely partisan again. “Well, I didn’t know then and I don’t know now what else you could have done in the short term! That’s why I backed you.”

“You
did
back me, Cousin Effie, and I’ll never forget it,” said Jeanette. “I’ll just have to figure a way to earn the money myself. I’ll drop out from M. Duran’s class after this month if I have to.” She picked up her drawing ruefully. “I meant to send this home when I was done with it, but I guess that’s no longer a good idea.”

“Actually, I think you still should, Jeanette.”

“Whatever for?”

“Because it will be much more dignified to keep on showing your folks that you are proud of your work. Besides, even if Cousin Joseph has been silent, he’ll want to see it, and so will Sallie and Mattie. And so will Cousin Sarah, I think, even if she won’t admit it.”

“All right. But I won’t write her back; I refuse to answer that spiteful letter.”

“Not in your present mood, dear. Later.”

Jeanette made a face. “What I had better do,” she said, “is start a cartoon of Peregrine Partout with an organ-grinder’s monkey. Even this light is good enough for that, and I’m going to need every penny I can lay my hands on.”

Nevertheless, she wrote her father again very humbly. She promised to stick to a budget and try to find a way to repay him the hundred francs.
I have sold another cartoon with Mr. Dolson. And since you have already paid for a term at the Académie Julian, I can continue there no matter what.
She enclosed the drawing of Miriam and added,
I hope this will prove to you that even one month with M. Duran has not been wasted. Oh, Papa! you don’t know how much I want to learn to put my heart into pictures!

*   *   *

Jeanette’s letter had the intended effect. Judge Palmer sent her a check to cover the rest of the spring at the Atelier Carolus-Duran.
Just between you and me
, he wrote,
after you met Theodore Murer at the Renicks’ house last spring, I bought some shares of Cincinnati Power and Light. They pay a good dividend and are rising in value. I don’t see why you shouldn’t benefit. We’ll call it a finder’s fee and keep it between ourselves; but in return, Jeanette, you must write your mother a kindly letter.

“Oh, how like Papa to turn around a hundred and eighty degrees!” beamed Jeanette.

“But he’s right about your mother, too. You must write Cousin Sarah soon,” said Effie.

“If only there were something to say.”

“She’s a proud woman, Jeanette, and you’ve got that same streak of pride if only you knew it. You’ve both got your backs up.”

Jeanette’s face tightened until she remembered her vow never to be irritable with Cousin Effie ever again. “An exercise in sympathetic imagination?”

“It wouldn’t hurt.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Edward’s Return to Paris

E
dward’s announced intention to remain behind in Paris after Carl returned to America set off protests from Murers on both sides of the Atlantic. Cousin Paul and Cousin Anna wanted to know what was wrong with their house. Had the laboratory space been too small? In Cincinnati, Sophie was, if anything, more alarmed and Theodore more indignant. Edward knew all too well why the family united to treat him as an invalid; but if Italy had taught him anything, it was that a gentleman could lead an orderly life of leisure and be none the worse for it—much the better, in fact. He was determined to live where that was understood. It was time to set himself up again in a place of his own.

“He means some
pension
like Mrs. Wiggins’s boardinghouse, stinking of mice and cabbage water,” grumbled Theodore.

Sophie reached for the letter. “He speaks here of an apartment.”

“What a cuckoo! An apartment would mean staff. Can you see Edward’s hiring, much less managing, servants?”

“There was Hans.”

“Hans was an apprentice pharmacist, not a valet.”

Yet who could force Edward to stay in Freiburg or return to Cincinnati? Carl needed no companion on the voyage back to America (if anything, he would have to be dispatched to Europe again to fetch Edward home in the event of the worst). Nor was money an issue. As Theodore had spent the last decade pointing out, Edward could afford to live anywhere he wanted. Now he knew where that was: in Paris.

*   *   *

Darling, darling Edward, how delightful
, wrote Cornelia, when he sent her the date of their arrival in Paris and his plan to see Carl off.
Please bring your nephew by for a last inspection—I must see what a year abroad has done for him, and Marius will want a report on your cousins’ dye works.
She saw no reason to add that, other than having precipitated Jeanette Palmer’s unfortunate outburst, Carl himself was a near blank in her mind, one of the many interchangeable young men assigned to the middle of her seating charts. She invited them to lunch with a mother and daughter who would be sailing on the same ship.

The lunch was pleasant. Afterward, when the two ladies had been sent off with cheery promises to meet next day on board, Carl proposed a walk. “You know what I’d like, Uncle Edward? This being my last full afternoon on land and all, I’d like to just saunter up the Champs-Élysées and then maybe climb Montmartre. They say you get a view out over the whole city up there.”

They took a cab to the Arc de Triomphe; and from there, strolling just as Carl wished, they meandered off onto side streets lined with young trees and handsome new apartment buildings. Looking up at a row of second-floor balconies surmounted by Beaux-Arts friezes, Carl said, “I can see being willing to live in an apartment if it were one of those.” The odd thing was, so could Edward. It surprised him to like the newness, the decorous symmetry of the buildings in these preserves of the modern commercial class. The district had no history. Perhaps that was what he liked about it; it was what he wanted in his own life: all future, no past, and a certain level of comfort. Not luxury, he didn’t need that, but no more shadows and dust, no more meanness.

*   *   *

After Edward saw Carl onto his ship at Le Havre, he spent a couple of nights at a seaside hotel just to prove to himself that he was at his ease alone and then returned to Paris. Not to the Meurice, where he and Carl had stayed, but to a room in the hotel near M. Artaud’s fencing school where he had stayed the previous fall. “False economy, my dear,” chided Cornelia, when he visited her in the Poutery. “What you really need is chambers at the right sort of club, the kind they have in London.”

“I can make do where I am for a while.”

“No, Edward, not even for a little while. You need a good suite of rooms at the very least. You may shrink from the fuss of housekeeping, but you will want to spend some evenings at home, and an uncomfortable chair in a shabby bedroom won’t do.”

“Agreed, but if I take a suite, inertia might keep me in it. What I want is a place where I can put a bookcase and hang some pictures—”

“Plaques, you mean?”

Edward half smiled evasively.

Cornelia gave him a meaningful look. “If it were lodgings in the Latin Quarter you wanted, you could engage Iphigenia Pendergrast as your agent.”

“I’m not a lady artist.”

“No. Oh, but I almost wish I were! Has anyone told you that your brilliant idea paid off? The New York
Weekly Panorama
bought her first article and engaged her to write a whole series of columns.”

“Well, that is good news!” said Edward, breaking into a real smile. “She deserves some reward in life.”

“She does, she does. They also bought a sketch by Miss Palmer to make into a signature decoration.” She paused to see whether Jeanette’s name would provoke a further reaction, but when none was visible she went on. “Now tell me, my dear, what do you have in mind? It’s really very clever of you to see the danger of making yourself half comfortable. Not many would if I didn’t. Have you called on General Noyes at the embassy, by the way?”

“Not yet. Theodore did last summer.” Edward’s face fell. He felt inadequate at the mere mention of the indefatigable ambassador: Cincinnati lawyer, war cripple, former Ohio governor, presidential crony. He was a high-ranking officer in the Union army who had continued his command after the amputation of a leg, not a corporal who went to pieces over a broken tibia.

Cornelia read his expression but refrained from observing that comparisons are odious. “Don’t put it off too long, Edward. If you are going to be part of the American colony, it pays to observe the civilities. Besides, all the young men who work there are in lodgings; they hear about vacancies, and so do their wives if they’re married. And I’ll ask around.”

*   *   *

The threat of becoming an object of interest to the wives of American diplomats and bankers spurred Edward on. He was always more resourceful and businesslike than his worried family gave him credit for, at least when he was well. He resumed fencing lessons and let it be known among the regulars that he was looking for a place to live. He called on a stockbroker he had met in Rome, a chess player who collected botanical prints. He looked into resources for research at the Jardin des Plantes and lectures at the École de Pharmacie. He paid the required call at the American Embassy and joined a club, the Cercle des Etrangers, Voyageurs, et Explorateurs, where he could dine, read in the library, or play billiards.

By the middle of April, he had accomplished what no one would have predicted: He had rented a laboratory near the Hôpital Beaujon on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, put together a daily routine, and sublet a furnished apartment off the Boulevard Malesherbes, where there was room for a few things of his own. He had always barricaded himself behind Mutter’s dresser; now he meant to buy something beautiful.

“This room expresses your personality perfectly, Cornelia,” he said, as his eyes swept the Poutery when he came to tell her about the apartment. “I think of myself as someone who likes to travel light, but I’m mostly a stick-in-the-mud.”

“Next you’ll be telling me you must find a house of your own!” laughed Cornelia. And perhaps a wife, although she did not say so out loud. Cornelia was, first and foremost, a hostess, and a realist when it came to old bachelors. “Who will look after you?”

“Did I tell you about taking Carl into Alsace to hunt up my grandparents’ farm? Probably not; it was last fall. We found the place easily enough. Near Colmar, right across the Rhine from Freiburg, and still in the hands of cousins. It was much as I remember it—”

“—only smaller.”

“I’d have sworn that avenue of poplars ran a half mile at least, but it’s only eight trees on each side. Also the cousins are peasants—rich peasants, but peasants, not a bit like Gran’marie. She had a butterfly’s touch and the lightest step. We got a mixed reception at first.”

“City folks in city clothes.”

“Worse than that, German industrialists. But we played up being from America, and they thawed—took us around the place and hunted up everyone who remembered Gran’marie.”

“All with reverence and affection, I’m sure, but I also see that you’re teasing me, Edward. What does all this have to do with how you’ll manage in Paris?”

“Everything. A few of the old farmhands were still on the place; but when the Prussians invaded in 1870, some of the families fled. I got wind of a couple I’d known as a child, whose daughter now runs a grocery store in Paris. The old folks live with her. I looked them up in December and again last week. Turns out that a granddaughter Marianne, who was in service as a parlormaid, had married the estate carpenter just before their employer went bust. They’re both out of work and willing to come to me for a year.”

“A carpenter, Edward, how original! Ten times more valuable than a gentleman’s gentleman—provided he learns to brush your suits. But now this matters: Can this Marianne cook?”

“As well as her mother.”

“An ambiguous reply. If she fattens you up, she has my blessing. Now, tell me exactly where the apartment is.”

“Up by the Parc Monceau.”

“Not on the Left Bank?” Cornelia had expected—and half hoped—to hear that he’d rented somewhere halfway between herself and Jeanette Palmer.

“It’s near my new laboratory. I want to do some real work, Cornelia. I investigated setting up on the Left Bank near the medical faculty, but I’m most comfortable around practical men. The laboratory I took is in a new building with different kinds of workshops.”

“One of those big buildings with big steam engines in the basement?”

“Exactly. I’m surrounded by other little chemical research laboratories and manufacturers of specialized tools for the hospital. And I like being to be able to walk to the Madeleine. M. Fauré is always worth hearing.”

Cornelia saw that he was not teasing her now, but deflecting her from the personal. For the moment, she amiably followed his lead. “Did I tell you that I had Maestro Grandcourt bring M. Fauré around last winter? Which reminds me—they will both be at my big garden party next week, and you must come, too. I usually give it at the end of May when the irises and roses have begun, but this year I’m using it to steal a march on the Salon. We’ll unveil my portrait that day while it can still make a splash. Once the Salon opens, everyone will be too glutted with new art to be impressed.
Le tout Paris
will be here, or at least everyone who will hobnob with mere rich Americans, which luckily includes most of the more interesting people. The worst snobs and bores always declined, so we quit inviting them.”

“Which now they regret.”

“Oh, no, not they—nor do we! But—” She leaned forward, eyes shining, and whispered conspiratorially, “if the sun is out, take a look on the second floor of the duchess’s wing and you may see light winking off her opera glasses. We do still invite the duchess. She never comes, of course—but she spies. Now, Edward, although you are neither a snob nor a bore, you are nevertheless wondering whether you can skip this mob scene.”

“I don’t relish crowds, Cornelia.”

“Superior people seldom do—no, I mean that, although, on second thought, it isn’t true: Carolus adores crowds and so does M. Grandcourt. Anyway, listen to me. All our young artistic friends are invited—Mlle. Borealska and Miss Richardson and, of course, Jeanette Palmer. We must make a to-do over Mlle. Borealska because she has had a painting accepted for the Salon. And guess who else is coming? Sophie Croizette from the Comédie Française is bringing the ineffable Sarah Bernhardt just to prove they are friends, which, by the way, they are and have been ever since school. Mlle. Croizette has one of Miss Bernhardt’s paintings in her dressing room next to a sketch by Carolus. I know because I’ve seen it. Now, you must come see
them
.”

“I have seen them both, Cornelia.”

“On the stage, you mean. Not good enough. Meet them in person. Write home,
I met Sarah Bernhardt and Sophie Croizette
, and they’ll all simply swoon in Cincinnati. Sophie is Carolus’s sister-in-law, which is why she will come. A few years ago, he painted a marvelous portrait of her on horseback.”

“I remember,” said Edward, slowly. It was in one of the magazines he had brooded over in the back of the drugstore. “By the seaside.”

“You actually saw it? Where?”

“Only an engraving, but it was very striking.”

“Not as striking as the flesh-and-blood model! And that was no studio pose, by the way. She rides as well as Carolus, which is saying a lot. I used to ride with her,” added Cornelia, wistfully. She shook off self-pity. “Now, never mind about the crowd; it spreads out thin over the grounds except near the refreshment tents and the music marquee. Oh, and I’ll give you permission to use the secret side garden. Everyone should have a secret garden, and I do—off the library. When you go downstairs today, tell Hastings to show it to you. In return, you must stop by the Madeleine sometime between now and then, and pray for good weather.”