Part 81

Leah. "Haven't got the time. He's coming to interview you, I suppose, and make French newspaper copy out of you."

Barty. "Why shouldn't he come just for the pleasure of making my acquaintance?"

Leah. "And mine--I'll be there and talk to him, too!"

Barty. "My dear, he probably doesn't speak a word of English; and your French, you know! You never would learn French properly, although you've had me to practise on for so many years--not to mention Bob and Ida."

Leah. "How unkind of you, Barty! When have I had time to trouble about French? Besides, you always laugh at my French accent and mimic it--and that's not encouraging!"

Barty. "My dear, I adore your French accent; it's so unaffected! I only wish I heard it a little oftener."

Leah. "You shall hear it this afternoon. At what o'clock is he coming, your Monsieur Paroly?"

Barty. "At four-thirty."

Leah. "Oh, Barty, don't give yourself away--don't talk to him about your writings, or about yourself, or about your family. He'll vulgarize you all over France. Surely you've not forgotten that nice 'gentleman' from America who came to see you, and who told you that he was no interviewer, not he! but came merely as a friend and admirer--a distant but constant worshipper for many years! and how you talked to him like a long-lost brother, in consequence! 'There's nobody in the world like the best Americans,' you said. You adored them all, and wanted to be an American yourself--till a month after, when he published every word you said, and more, and what sort of cravat you had on, and how silent and cold and uncommunicative your good, motherly English wife was--you, the brilliant and talkative Barty Josselin, who should have mated with a countrywoman of his own! and how your bosom friend was a huge, overgrown everyday Briton with a broken nose! I saw what he was at, from the low cunning in his face as he listened; and felt that every single unguarded word you dropped was a dollar in his pocket! How we've all had to live down that dreadfully facetious and grotesque and familiar article he printed about us all in those twenty American newspapers that have got the largest circulation in the world! and how you stamped and raved, Barty, and swore that never another American 'gentleman' should enter your house! What names you called him: 'cad!' 'sweep!' 'low-bred, little Yankee penny-a-liner!' Don't you remember? Why, he described you as a quite nice-looking man somewhat over the middle height!"

"Oh yes; damn him, I remember!" said Barty, who was three or four inches over six feet, and quite openly vain of his good looks.

Leah. "Well, then, pray be cautious with this Monsieur Paroly you think so much of because he's French. Let him talk--interview him--ask him all about his family, if he's got one--his children, and all that; play a game of billiards with him--talk French politics--dance 'La Paladine'--make him laugh--make him smoke one of those strong Trichinopoli cigars Bob gave you for the tops of omnibuses--make him feel your biceps--teach him how to play cup and ball--give him a sketch--then bring him in to tea. Madame Cornelys will be there, and Julia Ironsides, and Ida, who'll talk French by the yard. Then we'll show him the St. Bernards and Minerva, and I'll give him an armful of Gloire de Dijon roses, and shake him warmly by the hand, so that he won't feel ill-natured towards us; and we'll get him out of the house as quick as possible."

* * * * *

Thus prepared, Barty awaited M. Paroly, and this is a free rendering of what M. Paroly afterwards wrote about him:

"With a mixture of feelings difficult to analyze and define, I bade adieu to the sage and philosopher of Cheyne Row, and had myself transported in my hansom to the abode of the other great sommité littéraire in London, the light one--M. Josselin, to whom we in France also are so deeply in debt.

"After a longish drive through sordid streets we reached a bright historic vicinity and a charming hill, and my invisible Jehu guided me at the great trot by verdant country lanes. We turned through lodge gates into a narrow drive in a well-kept garden where there was a lawn of English greenness, on which were children and nurses and many dogs, and young people who played at the lawn-tennis.

"The door of the house was opened by a charming young woman in black with a white apron and cap, like a waitress at the Bouillon Duval, who guided me through a bright corridor full of pictures and panoplies, and then through a handsome studio to a billiard-room, where M. Josselin was playing at the billiard to himself all alone.

"M. Josselin receives me with jovial cordiality; he is enormously tall, enormously handsome, like a drum-major of the Imperial Guard, except that his lip and chin are shaved and he has slight whiskers; very well dressed, with thick curly hair, and regular features, and a singularly sympathetic voice: he is about thirty-five.

"I have to decline a game of billiards, and refuse a cigar, a very formidable cigar, very black and very thick and very long. I don't smoke, and am no hand at a cue. Besides, I want to talk about Étoiles Mortes, about Les Trépassées de François Villon, about Déjanire et Dalila!

"M. Josselin speaks French as he writes it, in absolute perfection; his mother, he tells me, was from Normandy--the daughter of fisherfolk in Dieppe; he was at school in Paris, and has lived there as an art student.

"He does not care to talk about Les Trépassées or Les Étoiles, or any of his immortal works.

"He asks me if I'm a good swimmer, and can do la coupe properly; and leaning over his billiard-table he shows me how it ought to be done, and dilates on the merits of that mode of getting through the water. He confides to me that he suffers from a terrible nostalgia--a consuming desire to do la coupe in the swimming-baths of Passy against the current; to take a header à la hussarde with his eyes open and explore the bed of the Seine between Grenelle and the Île des Cygnes--as he used to do when he was a school-boy--and pick up mussels with his teeth.

"Then he explains to me the peculiar virtues of his stove, which is almost entirely an invention of his own, and shows me how he can regulate the heat of the room to the fraction of a degree centigrade, which he prefers to Fahrenheit--just as he prefers metres and centimetres to inches and feet--and ten to twelve!

"After this he performs some very clever tricks with billiard-balls; juggles three of them in each hand simultaneously, and explains to me that this is an exceptional achievement, as he only sees out of one eye, and that no acrobat living could do the same with one eye shut.

"I quite believe him, and wonder and admire, and his face beams with honest satisfaction--and this is the man who wrote La quatrième Dimension!

"Then he tells me some very funny French school-boy stories; he delights in my hearty laughter; they are capital stories, but I had heard them all before--when I was at school.

"'And now, M. Josselin,' I say, 'à propos of that last story you've just told me; in the Trépassées de François Villon you have omitted "la très-sage Héloïse" altogether.'

"'Oh, have I? How stupid of me!--Abélard and all that! Ah well--there's plenty of time--nous allons arranger tout ça! All that sort of thing comes to me in the night, you know, when I'm half asleep in bed--a--a--I mean after lunch in the afternoon, when I take my siesta.'

"Then he leads me into his studio and shows me pencil studies from the life, things of ineffable beauty of form and expression--things that haunt the memory.