Every Month Was May
by
EVELYN EATON
Copyright 1946, 1947 by Evelyn Sybil Mary Eaton
Copyright 2010 by Logan Books LLC
ISBN: 978-0-9829280-3-5
All Rights Reserved
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For Elsie McCormick and Marshall Dunn
Two Brooks, 1947
Much of the material in this book originally appeared in somewhat different form as stories in The New Yorker.
Preface to the electronic edition
Best-selling author Evelyn Eaton (Quietly My Captain Waits, 1940) wrote a series of light-hearted stories about her life in England, France, and Canada in the years between the wars. Those stories, published in The New Yorker, form the basis for two autobiographical volumes, Every Month was May and The North Star is Nearer. Although the stories were written and published a lifetime ago, their appeal is timeless.
Evelyn Eaton was bilingual, and shifted back and forth between English and French seamlessly. Where the meaning of a French word of phrase might not be apparent to the non-French-speaker in context, translations have been supplied.
This book and its companion were illustrated by Garth Williams, well known for his illustrations for Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. Since we have been unable to determine who owns the copyright for those illustrations, they have been omitted from the electronic edition. Interested readers are encouraged to check the books out of their local public library to see them in original form.
I: Rue Eugene Delacroix
When I was a girl of seventeen, I was sent to Paris to be "finished." My mother gave me a choice of attending school or living with a French family. I chose family—the Olliviers—because I had just survived four and a half years in an English school known as "the girls' Eton," where I was exposed to three rigorous British R's—Rheumatism, Royalty and Religion. The buildings were damp, built of stone and, of course, unheated. There were two future queens and three duchesses in my class alone. The religion was High Church Anglo-Catholic. We had our chapel and our chilblains always with us. The stock inquiry in the fall was "Have you started your winter cold?"
One of my classmates, Lady Eleanor Smith, has described this school in her autobiography, Life's a Circus: "The rules seemed something akin to those of a female prison, and there was scarcely anything that we were allowed to do… We were fond of discussing various methods of suicide, and while we were obviously prone to the usual exaggeration of adolescence, it cannot be denied that the life we were leading must have been unsympathetic in the extreme to have caused so much bewildered misery."
After such harsh formative years I found the free air and free thought of Paris heady and irresistible. From the moment I ate stale sponge cake and drank a glass of Dubonnet in the Olliviers' shabby salon while my mother discussed terms with them, I was completely, for the first time in my life, dans mon assiette. (on my own)
There were four Olliviers, all very old to my young eyes. Mme. Joseph, the widowed matriarch, was seventy-eight. Emile Ollivier, head of the French Government in 1870, was her husband's brother. In recognition of his services to his country, his eldest niece, Claire, was admitted to Mme. de Maintenon's St. Cyr for daughters of impoverished aristocracy, an experience in education as formidable as mine. It left her with an inferiority complex and a yellow skin. "All of us had jaundice, plus ou moins,"(more or less) she told me once when we swapped stories of our schools.
Claire was fifty-eight. She did the cooking and the housekeeping. Her sister Blandine, who was fifty-six, attended to the business end of things—there were other lodgers in the house—and taught in a girls' school. Emile Ollivier married Blandine, Liszt's daughter by Marie d'Agoult, for whom this Blandine was named. Liszt's other daughter, Cosima, married Hans von Büllow and, later, Richard Wagner. This romantic connection between the Olliviers and Liszt and Wagner enchanted me. "La Tante Blandine," dropped casually into the conversation plus some unpublished letters and manuscripts of Liszt, which Blandine Ollivier brought out, convinced me more than ever that I had found my "plate." My mother was swayed by the fact that the Olliviers possessed a bathroom in which, for an extra consideration per month, they would allow me frequent baths.
Actually, I took only one bath there. When I diffidently announced that I would like to use the bath, there was a narrowing of Ollivier eyes, followed by a flurry of arrangements. A number of packages stored in the bath tub had to be removed and stacked on the landing. An antiquated gas stove at one end of the tub had to be lit. It shook and emitted fumes in a series of small explosions. When the water began to trickle into the bath, Claire stood on the landing, announcing from time to time, "Now it is a quarter full. . . . Now it is half full. . . . Now, mon petit, it is full!" The other lodgers in the house took a neighborly interest in the affair. They were all at their doors to see me come downstairs and enter the bathroom.
Blandine laid out soap and towels with an air of strong disapprobation and grave doubt. Claire brought a sheet. At St. Cyr, the girls took their yearly bath in a sheet. It was the only way to bathe with Christian modesty. Of course it did add to the laundry, and that was why baths, besides being inconvenient and hazardous ("On peut attraper la congestion!") (You can catch the congestion!) must be paid for extra. Remembering that my mother had paid extra in advance, I sat on the edge of the tub watching Blandine and Claire put reluctant finishing touches.
They left at last, glancing backward with distant curiosity, much as spinsters might leave the preparation of a bridal bed, dissociating themselves completely from the results of their handiwork. By this time, the water had cooled to tepid, besides being yellow with rust and dotted with soot from the still-smoking stove. I hesitated, but an hour's labor had been spent and there were ears laid to the walls. Grimly shivering, I washed myself in sooty suds. Next day, to everyone's satisfaction but my own, I began to sneeze. I had taken cold. Blandine and Claire gave me hot tisanes, lest it should turn to la congestion.
After that I gave up taking baths and, like the rest of the inmates of the house, scrubbed myself in my room. We all felt, however, a genteel satisfaction that the house contained a bathroom, and so was not like those primitive places you heard about in Paris. We possessed le confort moderne, even if we could never use it.
The fourth Ollivier, Joseph, was a mere forty-eight, a banker with offices in the Boulevard Haussmann. He didn't live in the house, but came every evening to visit his mother and on Sunday afternoons to take her for a walk. Though he was obviously the only prosperous one of the family, he was always referred to as "ce pauvre Joseph." (poor Joseph) The adjective was part of his name, as in the classic description of the typical French family—Mon noble pére, ma sainte mère, mon digne frère, ma chaste sœur. (My noble father, my sainted mother, my worthy brother, my chaste sister.)
He was a tall, broad-shouldered, red-faced man, with protruding eyes, a big mustache, an impressive beard, and the meek manners of an urchin in a pinafore expecting to be scolded. He was obviously his mother's favorite and his sisters' idol, so this aura of disapproval surrounding him was a mystery to me. One of Blandine's students hinted that ce pauvre Joseph kept an irregular establishment. "An actress," she hissed, "whom he's loved for seven years!" I never was able to check on the truth of this tale, but ce pauvre Joseph had a seductive twinkle when he wasn't saying, "Oh oui, Maman!" He was exquisitely polite to me and never failed to remark on my new hats, for which I owed him gratitude, as part of the French antidote to my English school.
The rue Eugene Delacroix, where the Olliviers lived, was a narrow loop, joining the Avenue Henri-Martin to the rue de la Tour. It contained about twenty houses, all of them three stories high. At either end of the street, a heavy iron grille, which I never saw open, kept out traffic. A small gate in the larger gate let in pedestrians between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M. Before or after that, you had to have a key or else arouse the concierge, which was difficult. On a cold wet night, she could be deaf even to the rustle of a ten-franc note. She looked like a troglodyte with small pig eyes and dark incipient mustaches. I was afraid of incurring her dislike and so not getting messages or mail, and I was glad when at last the Olliviers entrusted me with their huge iron key. It was too big to go into my pocketbook. I wore it on a ribbon around my neck and felt both decorated and emancipated when I went to the second show in the Passy movie house. When I came home I would hang the key in the dining room on a special hook, from which the Olliviers claimed it when they went to early Mass. They were very devout. They were also Royalists. Every day ce pauvre Joseph brought them his copy of L' Action Française, and after he had gone Blandine read us the editorials. The rest was cut into strips for toilet paper, as much as possible in complete articles and stories, so you could catch up with your reading in the cabinet particulier on the second floor.
Blandine was very anxious that my reading be elevated, and the books she discovered in my room horrified her. I read Beaudelaire, Rimbaud, Richepin, and not-for-jeunes-filles (young ladies) books like La Garonne. Once, thinking to please her and to make amends for my other literature, I showed her Renan's Vie de Jesus, which I had just brought home. She threw up her hands in horror. It was on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It was a vile book. Even to have it in the house was, if not mortal sin, a grave contamination. She begged me to let her burn it. I refused. Next morning, the Olliviers went to an even earlier Mass than usual and kept a funereal silence all the day.
Leon Daudet was their hero, eclipsed only by one other. I learned about this other my first winter in the house. One January evening Blandine said to me, "Mon enfant, we give a reception tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock. We would like you to be present to meet and greet our friends." She hesitated, then added, "Your black dress looks very suitable."
It was the first time they had entertained since I arrived. I thought it would be nice if I contributed some flowers. Remembering a parchment that hung in my room, testifying to the fact that Claire Ollivier had won a prize at St. Cyr for the arrangement of bouquets in "tasteful color schemes," I sought her out the next morning and offered to pay for any flowers she might like to get. She thanked me gravely, pressing my hand with a solemnity out of all proportion to my suggestion. I felt a little uncomfortable and wished the day would end.
My discomfort grew as I caught glimpses of the preparations in the salon. The gray-and-green slip covers of the armchairs and the sofa were stripped off, showing a violent red plush. Little, rickety, gilded chairs were brought down from their hiding place in the attic. Lunch that day was a hurried and abstracted affair, which was portentous in itself, for the Olliviers took cooking seriously. Their cuisine was of the good bourgeois variety, with blanquette de veau, soupe la bonne femme, poulet a la sauce piquante, and pot au feu ringing delicious changes through the week. Mme. Ollivier always pressed me to an extra share, because she was sorry for me. "There is no food worth eating in England," she said once. "I know. All the English are somber, on account of their cooking." Then she told me that she had been to Brighton on her honeymoon. "I had indigestion, but such indigestion, until I came back. No, mon pauvre enfant, you cannot tell me that you have ever eaten well. Tenez, I will make you a bouillabaisse that you will remember with tears when they put their rosbif and cabbage before you again."
As a rule meals were long and leisurely, conversation spirited at the Ollivier table. Today, they hurried through a meager lunch of bread and cheese and fish served cold in oil, washed down with red vin ordinaire, and scattered to their tasks. I went up to my room to be out of the way.
When I came down at four, the salon was full of very old ladies and very old gentlemen, all in black, among whom the purple robes of a monsignor and the scarlet of a cardinal seemed frivolous. The cardinal was seated. The Olliviers were standing together in the center of the room, which was banked on every side by tall chrysanthemums and white immortelles. My ten francs, I felt, had gone a surprising way. It had the atmosphere of a funeral parlor, and I thought that I could have given St. Cyr pointers in the arrangement of the flowers for a tea. One by one the guests filed up to Mme. Ollivier. One by one they spoke quietly and reverently to her and she responded by a pressure of the hand. Blandine and Claire were visibly affected. Claire had her handkerchief to her eyes.
I wondered what could have happened. A wild idea that ce pauvre Joseph must be dead flashed through my mind, but surely they would have told me. It could not be that.
The lady standing next to me turned and said, "Triste jour!" (sad day)
The cardinal sighed and raised his eyes.
"Is it—is it the anniversary of the late M. Ollivier?" I whispered timidly to my neighbor on the right. She put up her lorgnettes and stared at me.
"Mais voyons donc!" she said. "The day, the date!"
It was the twenty-first of January, 1920. I told her so. She waited expectantly. The date didn't mean a thing to me. When I asked her if she would be so kind as to explain, the cardinal leaned forward. "On this day, one hundred and twenty-seven years ago—" he began impressively.
"Our sainted royal master, Louis Seize, was put to death," the lady beside me finished.
"Triste jour!" said all the gathering. I chimed in respectfully.
There was a long pause. Claire distributed Dubonnet and stale sponge cake. Blandine began to light the candles on the mantelpiece. Here and there glasses were raised in solemn toast. Presently, the cardinal brushed some crumbs off his lap, rose, cleared his throat, and gave us his blessing. The King's Fête was over for another year.
II: Leetwaynia Legation
I said good-by to the Olliviers and to Paris with a sinking heart. I was "finished," now I must "come out." I was destined, Blandine said, as she embraced me, to make a beautiful marriage, probably with an English milord. Mme. Ollivier said I was destined to have a profound indigestion as soon as I reached Soo-tan-ton.
"But I am not going to Southampton," I said. "I go via Calais-Dover."
"N'empêche," (still) she said, "the indigestion will be there."
So I went back to London to my family. I was presented at Court on-the-occasion-of-my-sister's-marriage-to-the-Premier-Baronet-of-Great-Britain. I stumbled through a London season. I was sent to Scotland, to Cowes, to Ascot, to weekend parties, in vain attempts to "get me off." Finally I borrowed fifty pounds from an indulgent aunt and enrolled myself stubbornly in Mrs. Hoster's Secretarial School for Gentlewomen. I wanted to be independent. My mother cried at this disgrace. When, after graduation, I came home with shining eyes to tell her that I had landed my first job, she said quickly: "Hush! Not before the servants, dear!" When I told her I was to be secretary-translator to the Lithuanian Legation in London, she was mollified. This had a social sound to it. It didn't, she explained, seem like work.
Lithuania had just emerged from Russia, as I from Mrs. Hoster's Secretarial School for Gentlewomen. We burned with the same enthusiasm, the beginner's pride of place. We shared the same illusions too. The Legation personnel consisted of the minister, Mr. Narusevicius (Na-roo-shave-itch-is); the first secretary, Mr. Rabinovicius (Ra-been-o-vitch-is); the consul, Mr. Gineitis (Geen-ay-tis); two Lithuanian typists; and a business adviser, Mr. Harris, who was rarely seen. He and I were the English-speaking union.
Mr. Narusevicius had qualified for his post by being in prison many times when Lithuania was under the Russians. We spoke of him with pride. His prison career had left him portly and given him a puzzled expression. He lived and had his office on the top floor of the Legation. Mr. Rabinovicius distrusted figures and had the second floor. Mr. Gineitis, a poet who kept doughnuts in the files, had the ground floor.
Most of my time was spent in the Consulate with Mr. Gineitis, because, apart from an irritating war between Lithuania and Poland that was dragging on, there was very little occasion for diplomatic correspondence. What there was, was handled with a fine disregard for old, outmoded forms and red tape. The minister and the first secretary wrote, Deer Sir, No! to the Foreign Office; they scrawled postcards to the King.
Mr. Gineitis had mastered the telephone, so he could dispense with the postcards altogether. The first day I came to work, he grabbed the phone, gave the operator a number and, after a moment or two, began what I soon learned was his unvarying formula: "Here is Leetwaynia Legation spik," followed, after a pause, by the explanation that apparently he always hoped might be unnecessary, "One of ze Baltic states." That morning, when this information seemed to have been digested, he went on, "I want one important gentleman to take command. I want ze salts, ze meelitary salts, like what ze British Army have… Spik you," he said, pushing a paper at me. "Zey do not understand."
On the paper was written Army & Navy Co., Ltd. Swords, 500 officers, with tassels.
I covered the mouthpiece with my hand and said, "The Army & Navy Stores are a big shop, like Harrods. They're not the right people for swords."
"They are the Army and Navy Cooperative Association, no?"
"Yes," I said, "but that's only a—"
He snatched the phone away, shouting, "Salts! Salts with tassels!"
After some difficulty he got himself connected with the drug department. "Then send one gentleman here to take command," he said. "Here? I tell you already, here is Leetwaynia Legation spik!"
The stores sent around a man from their drug department. Winking at me, he took command and the order for five hundred swords for officers, with tassels. The stores turned it over to a "military purveyor" and netted a handsome commission. Everyone was satisfied.
I didn't work on Saturdays, but Mr. Gineitis did, with odd results. One Monday's mail brought us a communication from the War Office. Were they to understand that diplomatic relations had ceased between His Britannic Majesty's Government and the Republic of Lithuania?
I handed it to Gineitis and said, "How about it? Were they?"
He looked sheepish.
"It says here that visas are being refused to British subjects by this Consulate," I said. "Is that so?"
"Well, yes," he admitted. "I say no to visa."
"But why? Why are you refusing visas?"
"Not visas, only one."
"One is enough," I said. "You have to grant them all unless there's a serious reason. Otherwise, you'll be at war. That's what they're asking—are you at war?"
"Serious reason? Of course is. If I give Mr. Jems Armstrong visa, he directly killed."
I looked unconvinced.
"Consider," he said, and waved his hands. "Englishman present Polish officer with Leetwaynia visa—naturally, shot."
"You mean the part of Lithuania he wants to go to is in Polish hands?" I asked. He bowed his head.
"Then why didn't you tell him so and send him to the Polish Consulate?"
"Because," Mr. Gineitis said, drawing himself up, "I never admit Poland she occupy any part of Leetwaynia!"
Mr. Gineitis' great day came some time after this happening. Mr. Narusevicius was away, Mr. Rabinovicius had flu, and so Mr. Gineitis had to represent Lithuania at an official dinner and make a speech. It was a fine opportunity to lay before the world Lithuania's hopes and fears, her reasons for continuing the war with Poland. All diplomatic London, including the Polish ambassador, would be there.
Mr. Harris and I sweated for days over Mr. Gineitis' speech, until it was crammed with subtle analogies, judicious comparisons, diplomatic flattery and, above all, moderation. We rehearsed Gineitis doggedly right up to the evening of the dinner, brushed his top hat, and sent him on his way.
We waited for him in the Legation. Toward dawn we heard a latchkey in the front door, and Mr. Gineitis stumbling in the entrance. We ran down the stairs.
"How did it go?" I said, pouncing on him. "How did it go?"
He looked surprised. "Ver' good, ver much to drink."
"No, no, the speech!" Harris said.
Gineitis looked at us dreamily. "I say not one word of speech. 'Listen,' I say instead, 'Poland she are one dirty pig!' "
My relations were less dramatic with Mr. Rabinovicius, but complicated by suspicion on his side. The accounting was done in his room. It was part of my job to act as bookkeeper, to sign all checks, and to pay the salaries. The exchange was forty-seven litas to a pound, but the Legation was financed from the United States. Everything had to be translated from dollars into pounds first and then into litas. On payday a hopeful group composed of minister, first secretary, and consul gathered around my desk while I worked out the exchange. If it was favorable, they all shook hands. If they had lost a cent or two, they shook their heads, at me.
Once a week, Mr. Rabinovicius, who was a cautious man, checked the stamps, counting them before me against the list of letters mailed. He made no attempt, however, to supervise the checkbook. I had a power of attorney and could have drawn out every lita they had. Bookkeeping alarmed Mr. Rabinovicius and he didn't like to have me refer to the ledger. Once he asked me why I looked so often over the same pages. Would not a new book . . . ? He accepted my explanation of double entry with reservations, and the day the great seal of the republic came, he waited until I was at lunch and then sealed everything, including the ledger.
"You can get new book," he said when I complained. "Vould be better so."
"A ledger must be open," I said. "We must be able to get at it. I must be able to get at it."
Seeing him hesitate, I gave him a brief outline of the functions of a ledger. After a moment's deep thought, he said, "If so it is, I arrange that you open her a little."
For the rest of my dealings with litas I had to make entries clutching the great seal reverently in one hand and sliding the pen between the pages of a half-open book with the other. I consoled myself with the thought that when the auditors came, and they were expected soon, they would surely back me up. But before they came, I went.
We had a cashbox for petty cash—money from visas and passports—and banked the contents once a week. I had the key and took it home at night. One Friday I didn't get to the bank. I left the money in the box over the weekend in an envelope with the deposit slip made out. Monday morning I sent a messenger over with it. In a little while my phone rang.
"This is the Kensington Branch of the Westminster Bank," a voice said. "You're forty-one pounds short." "Impossible," I said.
"Come round and see," the voice from the Kensington Branch said.
I did go around, and it was true. The rest of the day I went about my work pale and preoccupied. The money had been there on Friday. I had counted it. The books and the deposit slip agreed. I had the key of the box. I took it home. I would be the obvious, the only, suspect. The auditors were coming in a week. I must tell somebody, and soon, but whom? Mr. Rabinovicius, who counted stamps? I decided to tell the minister. As I mounted the stairs to his ivory top floor, Mr. Gineitis came clattering down. He passed me, stopped, turned, and said, "I forget to give you this." He handed me a torn piece of paper, on which was scrawled, I o you forty one. J. G.
"I borrow," he explained. "Last night from the box. Directly I put back."
"You what?"
"Borrow, lend, put back, before the auditors," he said.
"But I have the only key!"
"I had other made," he said with a shrug. "Long time ago. I think you may not be there to give me cash always. Is right?"
"Is right," I said, and continued on my way upstairs.
Mr. Narusevicius received the key and my resignation courteously. I hadn't his passion for prison and I doubted that it would do as much for me.
The day I left, he called me upstairs. When I went into his office, there was an amber necklace on his desk.
"In Lithuania the amber means the happiness," he said shyly, "so I have made come the happiness for you."
III: Tally Ho Belge!
Soon after I resigned my job with the Lithuanian Legation, I went to Belgium to join my sister. It was while I was staying with her that I acquired a surprising reputation for being sportive. My English brother-in-law was first secretary to the British Embassy in Brussels; the ambassador was a bachelor, so my sister entertained on many occasions when the corvée (drudgery) should have been shouldered by an ambassadress. The Belgians entertained us in return. We went out constantly in le hig lif as Brussels' society column put it.
Everything was hig about Brussels, the food, the language, the atmosphere. The court of Good King Albert was the stiffest and dullest in Europe at that time, with a protocol that made Buckingham Palace seem like a cozy pub. The climate was foggy in winter, sultry in summer, debilitating the year round.
Nevertheless the Bruxellois went in wholeheartedly for sport. First on their list, most generally in favor, was le vélo, their term for cycling on bicycles with low handlebars, so that they rode crouched horizontally, haunches as high as their heads. Since the entire population seemed to take part, regardless of age or shape, the display of haunches was sometimes bizarre and always impressive. The streets were full of vélos speeding toward the Bois de la Cambre, four and five abreast, with interested pedestrians bounding out of the way.
But it was not as a véloiste, nor even as a pedestrian, that I acquired my renown. Some hig lif hosts invited us to their country place in Vielsalm for the weekend. Vielsalm was in the Ardennes, near the borders of Germany before the 1914 war. The house where we were staying was the kaiser's headquarters, the crown prince's headquarters, and the German High Command's stamping ground for several months. When the owners returned they found it full of looted furniture from France. Their own things had been carried off and were never recovered. The Germans had stabled their horses in the ballroom—one danced nowadays in the small music room—but otherwise the house was undamaged, the old gay train of life was in full swing and this was a weekend party of fifty guests. So much we learned in recitative from our hostess as she welcomed us, flanked by her two sons, who kissed our hands and took our coats.
There was a moment of constraint as my ringless fingers showed me to be that unwelcome animal the jeune fille (single woman). Belgian jeune fille never went out into hig lif. They cast a dismal pall over conversation which must be "correct" in their presence. Moreover, for any young man seen talking to one a shade too long, there was the danger that her mother would pop out from behind a screen, shout "je vous bénis, mes enfants," (I bless you, my children) and there he would be, hooked.
Since I had had the bad taste to accept their invitation, I must be a jeune fille émancipée, than which there was nothing more odious. But the sons of the house and their friends were anxious to be "in well" with the British Embassy, and they must rise to this unpleasing emergency. All this was obvious and familiar—I had lived in Brussels for a long six months—but it was disconcerting. It cast a pall over my conversation. Selecting an innocuous subject I inquired about le sport in the Ardennes and was told that there would be hunting of chevreuil next day.
Fine, I thought. I had hunted fox occasionally with the Queen in England; frequently hunted stag with the Berks and Bucks, and sometimes with the Duc d'Orléans' pack in the forest of Fontainebleau. I thought a chevreuil , which was a roebuck, wouldn't outrun either. If they gave me a good horse I felt I could show them something.
I got through a tedious evening of innocuous small talk with the older members of the family while my sister, because she was married, danced and flirted with all the young men. On my way, at last, to bed, I asked what time we should be ready in the morning.
"The hunt breakfast is at eleven-thirty," one of the sons of the house told me as he escorted me to the stairs. His name was Alphonse. He wore a Harrow tie.
"So late?" I asked, surprised. Hunt breakfasts, I thought, were usually over by half-past eight or nine.
"Have you everything you need?" he asked politely at the foot of the stairs.
"Oh yes," I said, "I brought all my riding things. But I may have to borrow a crop."
He stared. Evidently his remark had nothing to do with hunting.
"I regret," he stammered, "you will not be riding tomorrow."
"Do you mean to tell me," I cried, "jeune fille aren't even allowed to hunt?"
"In Belgium," he said stiffly, "hunting is a sport for men, Mademoiselle. No women ride to hounds in Vielsalm."
"But your mother told me this evening she had hunted for fifteen years."
"So she has. On foot," Alphonse said smiling. "You too may follow on foot."
"Thanks," I said, "I can hardly wait." We separated, hackles up.
Next morning, a beautiful frosty morning perfect for the chase, I found myself sitting down dispiritedly to a heavy meal of eight courses, washed down by three kinds of wine. Following hounds, or even a tortoise, on foot after this hunt breakfast seemed improbable, but I watched the other women dressed in their costumes sportives munch their way solidly through pheasant pie, smoked ham, sausage, black pudding, marron cream, cheese and candied tarts, wipe their mouths, grab their shooting sticks and march out of the room with determined expressions. My sister was not among them. She had decided to sleep through the meet.
The men, superb in "pink" coats, white breeches, black velour caps, ate their way through all eight courses before they too went out on the terrace to be mounted ceremoniously by grooms in special liveries.
Alphonse smiled at me as he went by, carrying a large brass horn. I thought he must be master of the pack until I saw that all the men were carrying horns or wearing them slung round their necks. I stayed in the breakfast room beside the only person who didn't seem to be going, a tall, broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking man of about thirty, wearing tweeds. He looked up as the room emptied. He made a face.
"You and I," he said in English with a strong accent, "do not count."
He poured himself some coffee, offered me a cup and, ignoring the bustle of horse and hounds on the terrace, all the important fuss of a hunt meet getting under way, continued tranquilly:
"Nor does the chevreuil.
"Is it good to eat?" I asked.
"They eat it."
"I've never seen one."
"Do you want to?"
"Well . . ." I said.
"Not sufficiently to follow on foot?" He smiled. "I have a car. Presently you shall see your first chevreuil." As we emerged on the terrace the hounds moved off behind the whips. The whole hunt followed, gay in the sunshine. After the horses streamed a rabble on foot, women, children, farmers whose fields the hunt would cross, townsfolk, who were being repaid for the honor of serving the chateau by this invitation to sweat. My companion and I were left alone.
"So," he said, "you have seen the meet. Now we will see the chevreuil break cover."
I thought he was joking, but I liked his attitude. He seemed to have no jeune fille complex. He took my arm.
"The car's round here," he said companionably. It was a Mercedes, long, low and fast.
"How can you know where the chevreuil will break cover?" I asked as we climbed in.
"I ought to know. For three years I lived like one. I was hunted, too, right through these woods." He turned and smiled at me. "My name's Weber, Artur Weber. I'm one of the petits frères retrouvés. That's what they call the New Belgians from New Belgium… the part that used to belong to Germany before the war. They don't like us much," he added as the car shot forward.
"Why not?"
He shrugged.
"It's fundamental. My father made much money manufacturing cars. That was vulgar. He had his biggest plant in Germany. That was unpatriotic. But they married my mother to him. It was useful, you see, to have access to all that vulgar money."
"When you say 'they' whom do you mean?"
"Tous ces messieurs of the hunt," he said, swinging the car into a long alley beneath the trees. We bumped along the ruts. "My cousins, your hosts. They speak good English, better than I. Have you noticed?"
"Yes," I said.
He stopped the car.
"We have to walk, but not far, I promise you."
"If the chevreuil really does break where you say I shall think you uncanny."
"It will," he said. He took my arm. We walked down a path that reminded me of a logging road at home.
"Yes," he said, "we were Belgians who lived in Germany. While we were being killed or driven out of our homes because of our Allied sympathies they were in England, picking up the Oxford accent. For four years Alphonse lived in London as a refugee in the grand manner, while I ran a dog team with the Belgian Army corps and lived in the mud. When we were fighting through these woods I kept an eye on the place for them. Now they're back."
He was silent for a long moment.
"De la m—" he said, "I beg your pardon!"
"You needn't. There are times when only the mot de Cambronne (Cambronne's profanity) will serve."
"Look," he said, "I think it would be nice to play some tricks on them."
There was the sound of horns in the distance and the whimper of hounds. We halted at a crossroads. Down both runways I could see dots of scarlet moving to and fro, crossing and recrossing the pathway. A sudden crashing in the bushes made me whirl around. I saw the chevreuil leap into the sunken lane where we were standing and leap out of it again into the woods. M. Weber gave a high-pitched, long view halloo. It was answered by a chorus of horns. I was accustomed to the master of the pack tooting the only horn, and each tootle having its own significance so that I was confused by this discordant symphony. M. Weber repeated his call in a falsetto so high that his voice cracked, then he dived out of sight behind some bracken and left me standing there alone as the whips came cantering up.
Alphonse was one of them. He arrived, cracking his whip and shouting to the hounds; then he recognized me as he reined in his horse. His eyes bulged. He looked all about.
"Where?" he said. "Was it you? But . ."
"View halloo," I said casually, "on the right." I pointed to where the chevreuil leaped out of the lane. The hounds, urged on by the second whip, picked up the scent and steamed ahead in full cry. Alphonse followed. The master, the huntsmen and the entire hunt swept by. Some of them touched their caps to me, or waved their crops, smiling approval.
"Now they will all go back tonight and bully their wives," a voice from the bracken said. " 'Why can't you be sportive like our young guest?' they will say."
I watched the dispirited rabble on foot, straggling down the runway. It was thinning out, but still there were a few undaunted Junos left. M. Weber emerged before they could catch up with us.
"Now," he said, brushing off the fronds of bracken, we will go to another place."
We ran back to the car, backed it out onto the road again, and drove for about ten miles. Then we got out to climb the dried bed of a stream by a broken bridge. We climbed for a long time, during which the noises of the hunt grew indistinct. Eventually we emerged on the top of a crag, with an overhanging rock between two trees. M. Weber helped me to the end of it. "Look," he said, "below."
The whole countryside was spread beneath us. I could see runways with scarlet dabs flying along them like spilled quicksilver. I could see brown blobs moving slowly in the opposite direction. Women and children going home.
"Voyez," M. Weber pointed to a network of ravines, "that is where we were just now. You can see that if a chevreuil were in there, he would have to come out here, where he did, in fact."
I saw.
"We used to watch the Uhlans from this point, maneuvering below. They had good horses. You have seen the ballroom where they kept them? But they didn't know the terrain as we did. And we outwitted them. We used to keep our dog team in that cave." He pointed to an opening beneath. "It was cold. And it was not always gay. I saw my brother hunted from this place, all one afternoon, down there below."
He was silent for so long I hardly dared ask: "He escaped?"
"Oh yes. But it was not much fun. They had him trapped in that ravine. Luckily they had no hounds, and night came early. They went home."
"Where is he now?" I asked.
"In Liége. He married and went into business there. They were invited for this weekend, but—Jacques doesn't care overmuch for la chasse, especially on foot. Ah, now I see," he said, "where the kill will be. The chevreuil has doubled back. There are only two choices left for him, not far apart. We will drive as near as we can until we see which one he takes."
"You've been very nice to me," I said when we reached the car again. "Aren't you afraid?"
He laughed.
"I have traveled, Mademoiselle. It was all too short a time but enough to give me some idea of your point of view, and how groundless are my cousins' fears! My cousins are hopelessly stupid. They will not marry until they are forty, some young girl out of a convent with a suitable dot. (dowry) They will spend the rest of their lives jealously suspicious, spying on her to see that she doesn't step over the line like all the other young wives they have known and flirted with. It goes like that. The things that girls in England, in America are ready to give up, at least to some degree, on marrying, because they have exhausted their appeal, are only made available to the Belgian when she marries. Naturally she is going to the night clubs and the boîtes and young men's apartments, avidly, because it is all new to her. She married to be free. Naturally her husband will find himself with some pretty horns."
"Dear me!" I said. But I was saved from further comment by an outbreak of music to our right, horns, hounds, and shouting men. It was the hallali. M. Weber stopped the car.
"Go on," he said. "Good-by, I'm staying here."
I got out and began to run toward the noise. It was farther than it seemed. I arrived after the chevreuil had died. The hounds, scientifically whipped off, were lolling in a circle round it. Men, dismounted, were blowing a long, melancholy salute, their horns in the air, their heads tipped back. They sounded the falling note three times. Then the group dispersed, talking and laughing, flushed with achievement, and began to remount. Suddenly they saw me, standing among them, figuratively tapping my boot with a nonchalant crop.
"Very interesting," I said, "quite a run. Of course if I'd had a horse…" I turned to Alphonse. "I haven't the strength to walk any further," I said. "Will you take me on your saddle bow?"
Alphonse, alarmed, was about to balk, but the other men, amused, ganged up on him.
"Mademoiselle est bien sportive," they said, "but she cannot do the impossible. It is four more miles to the house. She must have marched at least fifteen. C'est inoui!" (incredible)
Alphonse pulled me up sulkily We returned in a compromising tableau which, if I had had the mother to pop out from behind the screen, would have been definitive. M. Weber did not appear for dinner. I did not see him again before we left.
My sister grumbled: "You needn't have overdone it. Look what they'll expect now everywhere we go!"
"Don't worry," I said, "it couldn't happen again."
"What did happen?" she asked.
"That particular chevreuil turned in a circle," I said. "If it had run in a straight line, of course I wouldn't have tried."
When I came down for dinner that night the atmosphere had changed among the younger set. They toasted me. They teased Alphonse about the preference I had shown for riding on his saddle bow. I thought he preened himself a little toward the end. After dinner we danced. I was conscious of the women's eyes following us stonily across the room.
Alphonse cleared his throat. He made one or two nervously polite remarks. His courage faded through his polished boots. The concentrated malevolence of all those mothers got him.
"Merci bien, Mademoiselle," he said, and led me to a seat. Wiping his forehead of sweat, and perhaps of imaginary future horns, he made a dive for the safety of the already-married, across the room. Soon I saw him dancing with my sister, whispering in her ear.
"And how long are you staying in Belgium?" a voice inquired beside me. It was Alphonse's uncle, the conseiller-du-roi with halitosis and a double chin. He had asked me the same question twice the day before. This time he did not understand my answer.
"Chauve souris de l'enfer?" he repeated, belching absently.
"Yes," I said, "in my country we express it so, A BAT OUT OF HELL."
IV: The Admiral's Garçonniere
After eight sportive months in Brussels, I was glad to get a telegram from Paris: COME AT ONCE. NEED SECRETARIAL HELP. RUTH.
It was time I started to work again. I liked Ruth. I had known her at school before she was disposed of in the marriage market. It was the old story of money buying title. She had divorced her French husband. Now she was trying to have the marriage annuled so that she could remarry a Catholic, but this presented difficulties. She had two children so the usual pretext, nonconsummation of the marriage, could not apply. I didn't doubt she needed help. I said good-by to hig lif and caught the Paris express.
As the train eased into the Gare du Nord, a blue-bloused porter ran beside the window, signing to me to open it and throw him out my bags. The man beside me said: "Pardon!", raised the sash I was struggling with and placed his own bag in the porter's hands. Then with Gallic chivalry—after reason and self interest had been satisfied—beckoned another blue-blouse to attend to me.
This man looked up and grinned.
"Eh bien, oui," he said, "on arrive!"
It was so much what I was thinking—one arrives, one arrives at last, in Paris, on an April day in 1925, after the drabness of a Belgian winter—that I smiled back and gave him an extra tip when he put me into a taxi. It didn't prevent him from making a scene at the smallness of the amount, but the performance was mechanical. The driver slammed the door of his ancient Peugeot on me and my bags and climbed into his seat.
It was a vieux tacot (jalopy) of the worst kind, held together by faith and string, but it covered the ground at the usual brisk suicidal rate of Parisian taxicabs, in a series of spurts, punctuated by sudden braking which shot me forward and then as suddenly lunged me back. Conversation was difficult. When it wasn't drowned by earsplitting toots on the high-pitched horn, it was cut off altogether by the screech of brakes. Still, the driver persevered, twisting his head to look over his shoulder as we shot round a turn, letting go of the wheel to gesticulate with both hands as we came to the most dangerous intersections. I realized that I was out of step with the Paris tempo. My eye was out for anything but vélos or chevreuils.
"One remarks from the labels on her luggage that Mademoiselle has often crossed the channel," the driver said. He broke off to curse a policeman whose outstretched arm caused him the inconvenience of having to swerve around it. We had reached the quais and were going along the right bank of the Seine. Had I a feeble stomach? the driver continued. He had a feeble stomach. Dieu merci, he had never made a voyage to test its endurance…
I leaned forward to get a better view of the thin houses outlined against the Paris twilight. L'heure bleue was arriving. I watched the trees and the lampposts. I looked into the curving river. A tug was coming up with a trail of barges. We passed it. A red light showed the silhouette of a woman at the helm. I leaned back. In a moment more we had left the quais, and reached the rue des Marronniers and the apartment house where I was going.
There was a repetition of the scene with the porter over the size of the tip, only more sustained. His references to the hardihood of my stomach alone, the driver insinuated, were worth a handsome pourboire. Then there was the lifting of two bags to the sidewalk. Enfin, it was clear that Madame did not belong this side of the channel, she was a dirty foreigner. . . . One never heard the word étrangère in 1925, I reflected, without the adjective sale in front of it, and no matter by what large amount one overtipped, there must always be a scene. I picked up my bags and started toward the building. Perceiving that I was, as he would put it, a la page, the driver grinned amiably, flicked his fingers at me, and drove off. I took the lift to the seventh floor and rang the bell marked 17. The door opened. Ruth and the smell of new paint wafted out together.
"I waited three weeks to get the painters," she said, "and now they're in the guest room just when we don't want them."
"You mean you can't have me now?"
"I can't have you sleep in the apartment. But I've borrowed the admiral's garçonnière below, until the paint is dry… Come in… Supper's ready."
Riki, the Afghan hound, put his paws on my shoulders and licked my cheeks. The kitchen door opened. Good smells overcame the paint.
"It's all right with me," I said. "I don't care where I sleep."
After we had eaten and talked of her procès--all my French friends seemed to be having complicated lawsuits that year like an outbreak of flu—we went downstairs together. The admiral's garçonnière was a one-room apartment on the ground floor furnished with what a London landlady once told me was "beautiful bed-sit suit." A wine-colored taffeta bedspread with olive-green cushions made a sofa out of the bed. It took up most of the room. There were two lemon-colored armchairs, two gold straight-back chairs, a table and a commode. A great gilt mirror hung over an artificial fireplace. There were pictures from Le Rire and Le Petit Parisien framed on the walls.