MRS3 The Velvet Hand (4 page)

There was one very palpable difference in the Jockey which made all the difference in the world: a flourishing bar in the corner served by American bartenders. How real they looked! In another corner there was a jazz band, and that was American, too.

The types were as those of the Village only more so. More complete and finished than we can produce. And yet I don't know. I was amused to discover that the most picturesque and Vie de Bohèmish of them invariably turned out to be Americans. For example, there was a glorious young fellow with a black slouch hat and a flaming red beard. (How we sensible souls do love a swaggering pose!) They told me he was the American Bolshevist. Splendid to look at. But when he removed the slouch hat I saw that his hair was growing thin on top, and I felt rather let down.

At eleven, when we arrived, the place was empty; at midnight every table save the one next to us was filled. I was dizzied by the number of celebrities that were pointed out to me; Lady Evelyn Estabrook, the English Sappho; Boué Say, the cubist photographer; Otile Exeideuil, the inventor of Ga-Ga, which is not baby talk but a serious movement in art, etc., etc. In addition to the habitués there was a sprinkling of rich American tourists. I observed that the attention of these was unobtrusively called to the pictures, and no doubt appointments were made to visit studios next day. Well, artists must live.

There was one feature of artist life that had not altered. The celebrated photographer Boué Say, who it appeared was late of Union Square, was talking to Mme Storey, and that brought next to me his charming little companion who had no other name but Toto. I was half scandalized, half thrilled. Really, quite a nice little thing. She had no English except a few naughty phrases that she got off with innocent gusto. But I made out to talk to her in my French. Toto, however, preferred to express herself in the universal language of making faces. Enough to make you die! Times have changed! Those great ladies Mme Storey and Mrs. Wynn Charlton talked to Toto as unaffectedly as they might to any pretty child, and Toto was not in the least abashed by
them
.

In an interval of the music we heard an uproar of talk and laughter on the pavement outside as a new crowd discharged themselves from taxis. It was like a fanfare off scene. The door was banged open and a half dozen men and women burst in. As soon as they were in they began to ask each other loudly: "Where's Mrs. Smith? Where's Mrs. Smith?" Whereupon they all turned around and looked through the door again. I never saw an entrance better stage-managed. She entered quietly, last and alone, her noisy companions falling back to give her passage.

Well, there she was! A little thing, smaller than me; not beautiful, not young, not even clever, they said, but the sensation of artistic Paris. To me she seemed the very incarnation of Paris, though I knew she had but lately stepped ashore from a transatlantic liner. She was all wrapped up in a cloak of rosy fur, flamingo colour. Who ever heard of rosy fur before? But why not? Above this pink cloud she seemed all eyes—-dark caverns in which gleamed a pair of cold and watchful serpents. Her strange parti-coloured hair was drawn across her forehead in a wide band. A curiously wrought ornament of pink jade stuck out from her head at an angle. Her face was all deathly pale; her mouth a cold red splotch. Clearly the aim of this make-up was not to copy nature, but to set up a new criterion.

She allowed the rosy wrap to fall into the arms of a cavalier, and a little sound of astonishment escaped the beholders. Mrs. Smith was wearing a high-waisted dress! The only high-waisted dress that had been put on in Paris that night I am sure. How original of Craqui! It covered her entire too, with sleeves to her wrists, and a yoke that rose almost to her neck. It was made of some sheer white material embroidered with big pale pink dots, and was tied behind with an exaggerated thin wide bow with uneven ends, a Craqui touch.

Of course! Daring effects not being capable of supplying any further thrills, Craqui with one step had gone back to the prim. It was a humorous rendering of the Kate Greenaway period. Highly sophisticated primness. Around her pretty neck Mrs. Smith was wearing a glorious circlet of diamonds: twenty great flashing stones in an invisible setting.

A hint of grimness appeared in Mme Storey's eyes as she marked the diamonds, and I read her thought. Had an old man been murdered for those bits of carbon?

Mrs. Smith and her companions made their way to the table next to ours. I took note of the famous walk. It did have the effect of lending the little woman a sort of majesty. While the others talked back and forth, she sat facing the dancing floor like a sphinx. Nothing more than her tinted eyelids moved. She was like an expensive mechanical doll in the window of a toy shop at Christmas. Quite inhuman. One felt sorry for her. That was supposed to be a scene of gaiety, and she was not gay. On the other hand, there was neither pain nor ennui in the cold gray eyes. There was no expression whatever. All a pose, no doubt, but what on earth was the good of a pose that laid such a painful stricture on the natural motions?

In my mind I tried to reconstruct the millionaire's secretary, and failed utterly. What was hidden behind that inexpressiveness? Had she robbed and murdered in order to achieve her soul's desire only to find it dust and ashes in her mouth? Or was she satisfied? One could have speculated endlessly on the secret of her mask. The mask was what constituted her power.

The three young men in the party all waited upon Mrs. Smith with their subservient glances, and the other two women, manifestly, were only supers. One of the young men was favoured above the other two; he had the place of honour at Mrs. Smith's right ear into which he whispered. She listened but gave no sign. It appeared that the young man was known to my ladies.

"Hélie," whispered Mme Storey to Mrs. Charlton with a humorous cock of her eyebrow.

So I knew him to be the Prince de Rochechouart of whom I had heard. "Roshaswarr" they called it. It is only just now that I have learned the spelling. A rosy and comely young prince.

The amount of masculine attention that Mrs. Smith received was displeasing to Mrs. Charlton, who said somewhat waspishly:

"Having rung all the possible changes on charm, the latest chic is to fall in love with a woman who has none."

"I should not say from the visible symptoms that Hélie was in love," remarked Mme Storey.

"Only technically speaking, of course," replied Mrs. Charlton. "I heard to-day that they were engaged."

"Ah!" breathed Mme Storey with a glance in my direction.

I was terribly excited. A
princess
next! How amazing! And yet, come to think of it, was it not in a logical sequence? I glanced at the so-called Mrs. Smith with an unwilling respect. She was certainly an out-and-outer.

Presently the Prince caught sight of Mme Storey and came hastening around the table to kiss her hand. Mine too; a new sensation for me, the lips of a prince. Many polite nothings were exchanged in indiscriminate French and English. Mme Storey asked him to lunch with us next day. As he turned to go she whispered, indicating Mrs. Smith:

"She is marvellous! Do introduce me when an opportunity offers."

It appeared that Mrs. Smith did not condescend to dance. When the music started Prince Rochechouart took advantage of the general movement to introduce the two ladies to each other. Less than two feet separated them. Mme Storey had only to turn around in her chair. She had arranged that beforehand. I sat on the other side of Mme Storey and could watch them both without moving. Mrs. Smith bowed and smiled without expressing a vestige of human feeling. The young man slipped away to seek a partner.

"You are a countrywoman of mine," said Mme Storey.

"Ah, you are American?" returned Mrs. Smith with a glance which suggested she didn't think any the better of her for it. "I should not have thought so."

Her voice was low and agreeable. She obtained an effect of foreignness by speaking slowly, and with a particular distinctness.

"Yes, from New York," said Mme Storey. "Of course you know New York."

"I have been there several times."

"Perhaps we know some of the same people."

"I know nobody in New York."

There the conversation hung fire for a moment. Mrs. Smith was never one to help a conversation out. I felt sorry for my mistress. Just like sitting down to talk to a china doll. What
could
one address to such a blank surface? However, I underrated Mme Storey's resourcefulness.

"I have been
so
anxious to meet you," she went on with an air of naïveté that would have caused anybody who knew her well to smile; "you are the most talked-about woman in Paris!"

The doll was galvanized into life. Her lips parted, and she turned a pair of unguarded and entirely human eyes on Mme Storey. A blaze of egotism was revealed in their depths. It broke the spell that enveloped her. She could be flattered. One no longer shivered in awe of her.

"Who told you that?" she demanded with a strange eagerness.

"I hear it everywhere," said Mme Storey innocently. "From Mrs. Charlton, from M. Craqui..." She named other names.

Mrs. Smith, conscious that she had stepped out of her self-created picture, made haste to get back again. She shrugged. Her lip curled ever so slightly: her eyes became fixed in their orbits.

"Why should I be?" she murmured.

"Well, the reason seems perfectly clear to me," said Mme Storey, giving her more of the same. "You are a very remarkable woman."

With this line of talk Mme Storey assumed a somewhat foolish expression. It made me uncomfortable. I did not know which way to look. But she had gauged her victim to a nicety. Mrs. Smith swallowed it avidly. It gave me a new reading of the woman. It suggested that her terrifying inscrutability was after all only the inscrutability of a child or a savage in strange company. If so, it was her very unsureness that had the ironic result of making her famous—that and the genius of M. Craqui.

"One feels that you have had a wonderful, wonderful life!" said Mme Storey. "You are like a deep well into which life has flowed."

I don't know exactly what this meant, and I don't believe she did either, but it sounded impressive. Mrs. Smith kept the tinted eyelids down, because she could no longer look inscrutable, I suppose. One apprehended a flush rising under the make-up. No doubt many men had flattered her, but it was something new to get it from a woman, and a woman infinitely more desirable than herself. It affected her like a heady wine.

"You bring an exotic note into life," said Mme Storey. "One is grateful to you. Life is so ordinary."

Mrs. Smith laughed: a dry, nervous little cachinnation expressing the most intense gratification. Those left sitting at her table looked around in astonishment. I suppose Mrs. Smith had never been heard to laugh out loud before.

"You flatter me," she said.

"I don't feel that I
could
flatter you," said Mme Storey with a serious air.

"We must see more of each other," said Mrs. Smith. "Will you have
déjeuner
with me to-morrow?"

"Sorry, not to-morrow," said Mme Storey. "Any other day."

"The day after, then. At one-thirty. I live at the Ritz."

"I shall be charmed," said Mme Storey.

Next day we took Prince de Rochechouart to Voisin's, for lunch or, as the French call it, a fork breakfast. The first breakfast is a miserable apology for a meal: café au lait—ugh! I could never learn to like the nasty medicine. Voisin's is one of the dingy famous old Paris restaurants that the tourists do not often stumble on, a place where one obtains the
ne plus ultra
in eats.

The little Prince was an amusing study. Curious compound of boyishness and sophistication. Another notion about the French that I had to discard was that the men were all effete. Rochechouart was as fresh as a daisy, with cheeks like peonies and sparkling eyes, cornflower-blue. To be sure, he was half American, but there were many like him in Paris. It is later in life that they become hollow cheeked and blasé. To be a well-born, comely, and vigorous young man in Paris, what luck! But it needs a certain amount of imagination to appreciate it, and that he lacked.

I was determined to be democratic. He was no more than a scatter-brained lad, I told myself, like thousands at home; nevertheless, I confess I was impressed. That magic word "Prince" cast a sort of glory around him. Why, Mme Storey had told me his ancestors went on the crusades; and coming down to comparatively recent times, his three-times-great-grandfather had been guillotined during the Terror. The thought of that long, long family roll could not but be thrilling.

I was glad, though, that my ancestors were not in the crusades—as far as I know. Hélie still had the physique, but in the course of the centuries the moral virtues of the old stock had sadly fizzled out. To put it bluntly, he was as unprincipled a young scoundrel as you will see, but with delightful manners. His casual cynicism took my Anglo-Saxon breath away. He had only one virtue: he made no pretences. His candour, indeed, was disconcerting.

It was not difficult to make him talk. A few glasses of 1914 Bollinger and the cork was out of
his
bottle. Before we reached the entremets we were in possession of his life's whole history, the most of which I would blush to set down.

Mme Storey was looking superb, completely dressed in a certain shade of cold red that becomes her so well. Rochechouart made open love to her. It was nothing to him that he was engaged to marry another woman. My mistress listened with amused tolerance. Me he ignored, except when he remembered his manners with a start. I did not mind. I was well content to watch and listen to the comedy.

"I understand that you are to be congratulated," said Mme Storey.

"Well, I don't know," said the youthful cynic; "I'm going to marry Mrs. J. Eben Smith if that's what you mean. Were you surprised when you heard it?"

"Well, yes, rather."

"Ah, if
you
would only have me!" he said. "But, no! I don't want to marry you. You are too glorious. I would wish to stand in a dearer relation to you than that of husband!"