Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales

“They have a tournure de princesse—a distinction suprême,” he said to me.  “One’s surprised to find them in a little pension bourgeoise at seven francs a day.”

“Oh they don’t come for economy.  They must be rich.”

“They don’t come for my beaux yeux—for mine,” said M. Pigeonneau sadly.  “Perhaps it’s for yours, young man.  Je vous recommande la maman!”

I considered the case.  “They came on account of Mr. Ruck because at hotels he’s so restless.”

M. Pigeonneau gave me a knowing nod.  “Of course he is, with such a wife as that!—a femme superbe.  She’s preserved in perfection—a miraculous fraîcheur.  I like those large, fair, quiet women; they’re often, dans l’intimité, the most agreeable.  I’ll warrant you that at heart Madame Roque is a finished coquette.”  And then as I demurred: “You suppose her cold?  Ne vous y fiez pas!”

“It’s a matter in which I’ve nothing at stake.”

“You young Americans are droll,” said M. Pigeonneau; “you never have anything at stake!  But the little one, for example; I’ll warrant you she’s not cold.  Toute menue as she is she’s admirably made.”

“She’s very pretty.”

“‘She’s very pretty’!  Vous dites cela d’un ton!  When you pay compliments to Mees Roque I hope that’s not the way you do it.”

“I don’t pay compliments to Miss Ruck.”

“Ah, decidedly,” said M. Pigeonneau, “you young Americans are droll!”

I should have suspected that these two ladies wouldn’t especially commend themselves to Madame Beaurepas; that as a maîtresse de salon, which she in some degree aspired to be, she would have found them wanting in a certain colloquial ease.  But I should have gone quite wrong: Madame Beaurepas had no fault at all to find with her new pensionnaires.  “I’ve no observation whatever to make about them,” she said to me one evening.  “I see nothing in those ladies at all déplacé.  They don’t complain of anything; they don’t meddle; they take what’s given them; they leave me tranquil.  The Americans are often like that.  Often, but not always,” Madame Beaurepas pursued.  “We’re to have a specimen to-morrow of a very different sort.”

“An American?”  I was duly interested.

“Two Américaines—a mother and a daughter.  There are Americans and Americans: when you’re difficiles you’re more so than any one, and when you’ve pretensions—ah, par exemple, it’s serious.  I foresee that with this little lady everything will be serious, beginning with her café au lait.  She has been staying at the Pension Chamousset—my concurrente, you know, further up the street; but she’s coming away because the coffee’s bad.  She holds to her coffee, it appears.  I don’t know what liquid Madame Chamousset may dispense under that name, but we’ll do the best we can for her.  Only I know she’ll make me des histoires about something else.  She’ll demand a new lamp for the salon; vous allez voir cela.  She wishes to pay but eleven francs a day for herself and her daughter, tout compris; and for their eleven francs they expect to be lodged like princesses.  But she’s very ‘ladylike’—isn’t that what you call it in English?  Oh, pour cela, she’s ladylike!”

I caught a glimpse on the morrow of the source of these portents, who had presented herself at our door as I came in from a walk.  She had come in a cab, with her daughter and her luggage; and with an air of perfect softness and serenity she now disputed the fare as she stood on the steps and among her boxes.  She addressed her cabman in a very English accent, but with extreme precision and correctness.  “I wish to be perfectly reasonable, but don’t wish to encourage you in exorbitant demands.  With a franc and a half you’re sufficiently paid.  It’s not the custom at Geneva to give a pourboire for so short a drive.  I’ve made inquiries and find it’s not the custom even in the best families.  I’m a stranger, yes, but I always adopt the custom of the native families.  I think it my duty to the natives.”

“But I’m a native too, moi!” cried the cabman in high derision.

“You seem to me to speak with a German accent,” continued the lady.  “You’re probably from Basel.  A franc and a half are sufficient.  I see you’ve left behind the little red bag I asked you to hold between your knees; you’ll please to go back to the other house and get it.  Very well, si vous me manquez I’ll make a complaint of you to-morrow at the administration.  Aurora, you’ll find a pencil in the outer pocket of my embroidered satchel; please write down his number—87; do you see it distinctly?—in case we should forget it.”

The young lady so addressed—a slight fair girl holding a large parcel of umbrellas—stood at hand while this allocution went forward, but apparently gave no heed to it.  She stood looking about her in a listless manner—looking at the front of the house, at the corridor, at Célestine tucking back her apron in the doorway, at me as I passed in amid the disseminated luggage; her mother’s parsimonious attitude seeming to produce in Miss Aurora neither sympathy nor embarrassment.  At dinner the two ladies were placed on the same side of the table as myself and below Mrs. Ruck and her daughter—my own position being on the right of Mr. Ruck.  I had therefore little observation of Mrs. Church—such I learned to be her name—but I occasionally heard her soft distinct voice.

“White wine, if you please; we prefer white wine.  There’s none on the table?  Then you’ll please get some and remember to place a bottle of it always here between my daughter and myself.”

“That lady seems to know what she wants,” said Mr. Ruck, “and she speaks so I can understand her.  I can’t understand every one over here.  I’d like to make that lady’s acquaintance.  Perhaps she knows what I want, too: it seems so hard to find out!  But I don’t want any of their sour white wine; that’s one of the things I don’t want.  I guess she’ll be an addition to the pension.”

Mr. Ruck made the acquaintance of Mrs. Church that evening in the parlour, being presented to her by his wife, who presumed on the rights conferred upon herself by the mutual proximity, at table, of the two ladies.  I seemed to make out that in Mrs. Church’s view Mrs. Ruck presumed too far.  The fugitive from the Pension Chamousset, as M. Pigeonneau called her, was a little fresh plump comely woman, looking less than her age, with a round bright serious face.  She was very simply and frugally dressed, not at all in the manner of Mr. Ruck’s companions, and had an air of quiet distinction which was an excellent defensive weapon.  She exhibited a polite disposition to listen to what Mr. Ruck might have to say, but her manner was equivalent to an intimation that what she valued least in boarding-house life was its social opportunities.  She had placed herself near a lamp, after carefully screwing it and turning it up, and she had opened in her lap, with the assistance of a large embroidered marker, an octavo volume which I perceived to be in German.  To Mrs. Ruck and her daughter she was evidently a puzzle; they were mystified beyond appeal by her frugal attire and expensive culture.  The two younger ladies, however, had begun to fraternise freely, and Miss Ruck presently went wandering out of the room with her arm round the waist of Miss Church.  It was a warm evening; the long windows of the salon stood wide open to the garden, and, inspired by the balmy darkness, M. Pigeonneau and Mademoiselle Beaurepas, a most obliging little woman who lisped and always wore a huge cravat, declared they would organise a fête de nuit.  They engaged in this enterprise, and the fête developed itself on the lines of half a dozen red paper lanterns hung about in the trees, and of several glasses of sirop carried on a tray by the stout-armed Célestine.  As the occasion deepened to its climax I went out into the garden, where M. Pigeonneau was master of ceremonies.

“But where are those charming young ladies,” he cried, “Mees Roque and the new-comer, l’aimable transfuge?  Their absence has been remarked and they’re wanting to the brilliancy of the scene.  Voyez, I have selected a glass of syrup—a generous glass—for Mees Roque, and I advise you, my young friend, if you wish to make a good impression, to put aside one which you may offer to the other young lady.  What’s her name?  Mees Cheurche?  I see; it’s a singular name.  Ca veut dire ‘église,’ n’est-ce-pas?  Voilà, a church where I’d willingly worship!”

Mr. Ruck presently came out of the salon, having concluded his interview with the elder of the pair.  Through the open window I saw that accomplished woman seated under the lamp with her German octavo, while Mrs. Ruck, established empty-handed in an armchair near her, fairly glowered at her for fascination.

“Well, I told you she’d know what I want,” he promptly observed to me.  “She says I want to go right up to Appenzell, wherever that is; that I want to drink whey and live in a high latitude—what did she call it?—a high altitude.  She seemed to think we ought to leave for Appenzell to-morrow; she’d got it all fixed.  She says this ain’t a high enough lat—a high enough altitude.  And she says I mustn’t go too high either; that would be just as bad; she seems to know just the right figure.  She says she’ll give me a list of the hotels where we must stop on the way to Appenzell.  I asked her if she didn’t want to go with us, but she says she’d rather sit still and read.  I guess she’s a big reader.”

The daughter of this devotee now reappeared, in company with Miss Ruck, with whom she had been strolling through the outlying parts of the garden; and that young lady noted with interest the red paper lanterns.  “Good gracious,” she inquired, “are they trying to stick the flower-pots into the trees?”

“It’s an illumination in honour of our arrival,” her companion returned.  “It’s a triumph over Madame Chamousset.”

“Meanwhile, at the Pension Chamousset,” I ventured to suggest, “they’ve put out their lights—they’re sitting in darkness and lamenting your departure.”

She smiled at me—she was standing in the light that came from the house.  M. Pigeonneau meanwhile, who had awaited his chance, advanced to Miss Ruck with his glass of syrup.  “I’ve kept it for you, mademoiselle,” he said; “I’ve jealously guarded it.  It’s very delicious!”

Miss Ruck looked at him and his syrup without making any motion to take the glass.  “Well, I guess it’s sour,” she dropped with a small shake of her head.

M. Pigeonneau stood staring, his syrup in his hand; then he slowly turned away.  He looked about at the rest of us as to appeal from Miss Ruck’s insensibility, and went to deposit his rejected tribute on a bench.  “Won’t you give it to me?” asked Miss Church in faultless French.  “J’adore le sirop, moi.”

M. Pigeonneau came back with alacrity and presented the glass with a very low bow.  “I adore good manners.”

This incident caused me to look at Miss Church with quickened interest.  She was not strikingly pretty, but in her charming irregular face was a light of ardour.  Like her mother, though in a less degree, she was simply dressed.

“She wants to go to America, and her mother won’t let her”—Miss Sophy explained to me her friend’s situation.

“I’m very sorry—for America,” I responsively laughed.

“Well, I don’t want to say anything against your mother, but I think it’s shameful,” Miss Ruck pursued.

“Mamma has very good reasons.  She’ll tell you them all.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t want to hear them,” said Miss Ruck.  “You’ve got a right to your own country; every one has a right to their own country.”

“Mamma’s not very patriotic,” Aurora was at any rate not too spiritless to mention.

“Well, I call that dreadful,” her companion declared.  “I’ve heard there are some Americans like that, but I never believed it.”

“Oh there are all sorts of Americans.”

“Aurora’s one of the right sort,” cried Miss Ruck, ready, it seemed, for the closest comradeship.

“Are you very patriotic,” I asked of the attractive exile.

Miss Ruck, however, promptly answered for her.  “She’s right down homesick—she’s dying to go.  If you were me,” she went on to her friend, “I guess your mother would have to take me.”

“Mamma’s going to take me to Dresden.”

“Well, I never heard of anything so cold-blooded!” said Miss Ruck.  “It’s like something in a weird story.”

“I never heard Dresden was so awful a fate,” I ventured to interpose.

Miss Ruck’s eyes made light of me.  “Well, I don’t believe you’re a good American,” she smartly said, “and I never supposed you were.  You’d better go right in there and talk to Mrs. Church.”

“Dresden’s really very nice, isn’t it?” I asked of her companion.

“It isn’t nice if you happen to prefer New York,” Miss Ruck at once returned.  “Miss Church prefers New York.  Tell him you’re dying to see New York; it will make him mad,” she went on.

“I’ve no desire to make him mad,” Aurora smiled.

“It’s only Miss Ruck who can do that,” I hastened to state.  “Have you been a long time in Europe?” I added.

“As long as I can remember.”

“I call that wicked!” Miss Ruck declared.

“You might be in a worse place,” I continued.  “I find Europe very interesting.”

Miss Ruck fairly snorted.  “I was just saying that you wanted to pass for a European.”

Well, I saw my way to admit it.  “Yes, I want to pass for a Dalmatian.”

Miss Ruck pounced straight.  “Then you had better not come home.  We know how to treat your sort.”

“Were you born in these countries?” I asked of Aurora Church.

“Oh no—I came to Europe a small child.  But I remember America a little, and it seems delightful.”

“Wait till you see it again.  It’s just too lovely,” said Miss Ruck.

“The grandest country in all the world,” I added.

Miss Ruck began to toss her head.  “Come away, my dear.  If there’s a creature I despise it’s a man who tries to say funny things about his own country.”

But Aurora lingered while she all appealingly put it to me.  “Don’t you think one can be tired of Europe?”

“Well—as one may be tired of life.”

“Tired of the life?” cried Miss Ruck.  “Father was tired of it after three weeks.”

“I’ve been here sixteen years,” her friend went on, looking at me as for some charming intelligence.  “It used to be for my education.  I don’t know what it’s for now.”

“She’s beautifully educated,” Miss Ruck guaranteed.  “She knows four languages.”

“I’m not very sure I know English!”

“You should go to Boston!” said our companion.  “They speak splendidly in Boston.”

“C’est mon rêve,” said Aurora, still looking at me.  “Have you been all over Europe,” I asked—“in all the different countries?”

She consulted her reminiscences.  “Everywhere you can find a pension.  Mamma’s devoted to pensions.  We’ve lived at one time or another in every pension in Europe—say at some five or six hundred.”

“Well, I should think you had seen about enough!” Miss Ruck exhaled.

“It’s a delightful way of seeing Europe”—our friend rose to a bright high irony.  “You may imagine how it has attached me to the different countries.  I have such charming souvenirs!  There’s a pension awaiting us now at Dresden—eight francs a day, without wine.  That’s so much beyond our mark that mamma means to make them give us wine.  Mamma’s a great authority on pensions; she’s known, that way, all over Europe.  Last winter we were in Italy, and she discovered one at Piacenza—four francs a day.  We made economies.”

“Your mother doesn’t seem to mingle much,” observed Miss Ruck, who had glanced through the window at Mrs. Church’s concentration.

“No, she doesn’t mingle, except in the native society.  Though she lives in pensions she detests our vulgar life.”

“‘Vulgar’?” cried Miss Ruck.  “Why then does she skimp so?”  This young woman had clearly no other notion of vulgarity.

“Oh because we’re so poor; it’s the cheapest way to live.  We’ve tried having a cook, but the cook always steals.  Mamma used to set me to watch her; that’s the way I passed my jeunesse—my belle jeunesse.  We’re frightfully poor,” she went on with the same strange frankness—a curious mixture of girlish grace and conscious cynicism.  “Nous n’avons pas le sou.  That’s one of the reasons we don’t go back to America.  Mamma says we could never afford to live there.”

“Well, any one can see that you’re an American girl,” Miss Ruck remarked in a consolatory manner.  “I can tell an American girl a mile off.  You’ve got the natural American style.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t the natural American clothes,” said Aurora in tribute to the other’s splendour.

“Well, your dress was cut in France; any one can see that.”

“Yes,” our young lady laughed, “my dress was cut in France—at Avranches.”

“Well, you’ve got a lovely figure anyway,” pursued her companion.

“Ah,” she said for the pleasantry of it, “at Avranches, too, my figure was admired.”  And she looked at me askance and with no clear poverty of intention.  But I was an innocent youth and I only looked back at her and wondered.  She was a great deal nicer than Miss Ruck, and yet Miss Ruck wouldn’t have said that in that way.  “I try to be the American girl,” she continued; “I do my best, though mamma doesn’t at all encourage it.  I’m very patriotic.  I try to strike for freedom, though mamma has brought me up à la française; that is as much as one can in pensions.  For instance I’ve never been out of the house without mamma—oh never never!  But sometimes I despair; American girls do come out so with things.  I can’t come out, I can’t rush in, like that.  I’m awfully pinched, I’m always afraid.  But I do what I can, as you see.  Excusez du peu!”

I thought this young lady of an inspiration at least as untrammelled as her unexpatriated sisters, and her despondency in the true note of much of their predominant prattle.  At the same time she had by no means caught, as it seemed to me, what Miss Ruck called the natural American style.  Whatever her style was, however, it had a fascination—I knew not what (as I called it) distinction, and yet I knew not what odd freedom.

The young ladies began to stroll about the garden again, and I enjoyed their society until M. Pigeonneau’s conception of a “high time” began to languish.

V

Mr. Ruck failed to take his departure for Appenzell on the morrow, in spite of the eagerness to see him off quaintly attributed by him to Mrs. Church.  He continued on the contrary for many days after to hang about the garden, to wander up to the banker’s and back again, to engage in desultory conversation with his fellow boarders, and to endeavour to assuage his constitutional restlessness by perusal of the American journals.  But it was at least on the morrow that I had the honour of making Mrs. Church’s acquaintance.  She came into the salon after the midday breakfast, her German octavo under her arm, and appealed to me for assistance in selecting a quiet corner.

“Would you very kindly,” she said, “move that large fauteuil a little more this way?  Not the largest; the one with the little cushion.  The fauteuils here are very insufficient; I must ask Madame Beaurepas for another.  Thank you; a little more to the left, please; that will do.  Are you particularly engaged?” she inquired after she had seated herself.  “If not I should like briefly to converse with you.  It’s some time since I’ve met a young American of your—what shall I call it?—affiliations.  I’ve learned your name from Madame Beaurepas; I must have known in other days some of your people.  I ask myself what has become of all my friends.  I used to have a charming little circle at home, but now I meet no one I either know or desire to know.  Don’t you think there’s a great difference between the people one meets and the people one would like to meet?  Fortunately, sometimes,” my patroness graciously added, “there’s no great difference.  I suppose you’re a specimen—and I take you for a good one,” she imperturbably went on—“of modern young America.  Tell me, then, what modern young America is thinking of in these strange days of ours.  What are its feelings, its opinions, its aspirations?  What is its ideal?”  I had seated myself and she had pointed this interrogation with the gaze of her curiously bright and impersonal little eyes.  I felt it embarrassing to be taken for a superior specimen of modern young America and to be expected to answer for looming millions.  Observing my hesitation Mrs. Church clasped her hands on the open page of her book and gave a dismal, a desperate smile.  “Has it an ideal?” she softly asked.  “Well, we must talk of this,” she proceeded without insisting.  “Speak just now for yourself simply.  Have you come to Europe to any intelligent conscious end?”

“No great end to boast of,” I said.  “But I seem to feel myself study a little.”

“Ah, I’m glad to hear that.  You’re gathering up a little European culture; that’s what we lack, you know, at home.  No individual can do much, of course; but one mustn’t be discouraged—every little so counts.”

“I see that you at least are doing your part,” I bravely answered, dropping my eyes on my companion’s learned volume.

“Ah yes, I go as straight as possible to the sources.  There’s no one after all like the Germans.  That is for digging up the facts and the evidence.  For conclusions I frequently diverge.  I form my opinions myself.  I’m sorry to say, however,” Mrs. Church continued, “that I don’t do much to spread the light.  I’m afraid I’m sadly selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil.  I belong—I frankly confess it—to the class of impenitent absentees.”

“I had the pleasure, last evening,” I said, “of making the acquaintance of your daughter.  She tells me you’ve been a long time in Europe.”

She took it blandly.  “Can one ever be too long?  You see it’s our world, that of us few real fugitives from the rule of the mob.  We shall never go back to that.”

“Your daughter nevertheless fancies she yearns!” I replied.

“Has she been taking you into her confidence?  She’s a more sensible young lady than she sometimes appears.  I’ve taken great pains with her; she’s really—I may be permitted to say it—superbly educated.”

“She seemed to me to do you honour,” I made answer.  “And I hear she speaks fluently four languages.”

“It’s not only that,” said Mrs. Church in the tone of one sated with fluencies and disillusioned of diplomas.  “She has made what we call de fortes études—such as I suppose you’re making now.  She’s familiar with the results of modern science; she keeps pace with the new historical school.”

“Ah,” said I, “she has gone much further than I!”

She seemed to look at me a moment as for the tip of the ear of irony.  “You doubtless think I exaggerate, and you force me therefore to mention the fact that I speak of such matters with a certain intelligence.”

“I should never dream of doubting it,” I returned, “but your daughter nevertheless strongly holds that you ought to take her home.”  I might have feared that these words would practically represent treachery to the young lady, but I was reassured by seeing them produce in her mother’s placid surface no symptom whatever of irritation.

“My daughter has her little theories,” that lady observed; “she has, I may say, her small fond illusions and rebellions.  And what wonder!  What would youth be without its Sturm and Drang?  Aurora says to herself—all at her ease—that she would be happier in their dreadful New York, in their dreary Boston, in their desperate Philadelphia, than in one of the charming old cities in which our lot is cast.  But she knows not what she babbles of—that’s all.  We must allow our children their yearning to make mistakes, mustn’t we?  But we must keep the mistakes down to as few as possible.”

Her soft sweet positiveness, beneath which I recognised all sorts of really hard rigours of resistance and aggression, somehow breathed a chill on me.  “American cities,” I none the less threw off, “are the paradise of the female young.”

“Do you mean,” she inquired, “that the generations reared in those places are angels?”

“Well,” I said resolutely, “they’re the nicest of all girls.”

“This young lady—what’s her odd name?—with whom my daughter has formed a somewhat precipitate acquaintance: is Miss Ruck an angel and one of the nicest of all?  But I won’t,” she amusedly added, “force you to describe her as she deserves.  It would be too cruel to make a single exception.”

“Well,” I at any rate pleaded, “in America they’ve the easiest lot and the best time.  They’ve the most innocent liberty.”