The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 57
ONE late afternoon in April, nineteen thirteen, when the trees in the garden were all feathery and soft with the first green of the Gallic springtime, Madame Gigon sat in her chair by the door of the long drawing-room bidding her guests good-by, one by one, as they left her usual Thursday salon. The drawing-room, owing to the sharp slope of the ground upon which the house was built, lay below the surface of the Rue Raynouard on the garden side of the house so that the guests leaving were forced to climb a lang flight of stairs that led up to the street door. The stairway, opening directly into the drawing-room, provided a long, high vista leading up to a door, itself noticeable by its very insignificance. It was one of the charming features of the house that on the street side it was but one story high with a single door and a row of high windows which betrayed no hint of the beauty and space within its walls. On the garden side, however, the house presented a beautiful façade some three stories high, constructed of Caen stone and designed in the best manner of the eighteenth century. Lenôtre himself was said to have had a hand in the planning of the terraces and the pavilion that stood at a little distance completely embowered by shrubs and covered by a canopy made of the broad green leaves of plane trees. The house, after a fashion, turned its back upon the world, concealing its beauties from the eye of the random passerby, preserving them for the few who were admitted by the humble and unpretentious door that swung open upon the cobble stones of the Rue Raynouard. To the world it showed the face of a petite bourgeoise. To its friends it revealed the countenance of an eighteenth century marquise. And this fact had influenced for more than a century and a half the character of its tenants. The prosperous chocolate manufacturer abandoned it for the German palace in the Avenue de Jena for the very reason that Lily Shane seized it the moment it fell vacant. It was no sort of a house for bne who desired the world to recognize his success and the character of his life, but it was an excellent house in which to live quietly, even secretly. It stood isolated in the very midst of Paris.
Madame Gigon sat in a high-backed chair, her small, withered body propped among cushions, her feet resting on a footstool. Since her eyes had grown dim she used her ears as a means of watching her guests; and these, after the fashion of such organs, had become sharper and sharper with the failure of her sight.
A fat and dowdy woman dressed all in white and wearing an extravagant white veil moved up to her.
"Good-by, Madame Gigon," she said. "You come to me on Friday. Don't forget. The Prince himself will be there."
Madame Gigon, instead of peering at the white lady, leaned back. "Ah, it's you, Héloise. . . . Yes, I will be there on Friday. But you are leaving early."
"No," replied the white lady, who was a countess and possessed a fine collection of armor. "No. Others have gone before me. I am dining out in the Boulevard St. Germain."
Madame Gigon smiled. "With your Jewish friends?"
"Yes. It is a long way."
"They say her eldest daughter is to marry a rich American . . . millions. He is called Blumenthal."
"Oui . . . a very nice gentleman and the Good God alone knows how rich."
"Well, money is a great thing . . . the foundation of everything, Héloise."
"Yes . . . Good-by . . . On Friday then. And fetch Madame Shane if she cares to come."
And the plump white lady made her way with effort up the long polished stairway to the unpretentious doorway.
Madame Gigon, holding Michou on her lap, began fondling the dog's ears. She leaned back and listened. Most of the guests had gone. Her sharp ears constructed the scene for her. A shrill and peevish voice in the far corner betrayed Madame de Cyon. The old woman saw her, fat, with dyed black hair and a round face well made up to conceal the ravages of time. A Russian woman, married to a French diplomat . . . Bonapartist of course. She translated American novels into French to amuse herself and to help keep up the household in Neuilly. Yet she was rich, for her fat pig's hands were covered with rings and the sable of her cloak was the best.
A man's voice, ill-tempered and gruff, rose through the shadowy room. Captain Marchand, who did not get on with his wife. Toactless of Madame de Cyon to have led them to the bridge table to play with each other. Bridge-mad . . . was Madame de Cyon . . . bridge-mad, and she hated like the Devil to lose. To lose five francs was like losing one of her fat legs. Strange game . . . this bridge. It put every one into a bad temper. Not at all like piquet.
"Deux pique!" announced Madame de Cyon.
"Passe!" . . . "Passe!" . . . "Passe!"
From the dining-room issued the sound of two voices in dispute, the one high-pitched, old and somewhat shrill, and the other rather deep and gentle, almost conciliatory. They drifted to Madame Gigon across the murmurous spaces of the drawing-room. Madame Blaise and "Mees Ellen's" friend, Schneiderman. Madame Blaise was a Gasconne, old, shrill and vituperatory, yet somehow amusing and stimulating . . . a little cracked perhaps but still full of spirit, and mysterious in the fashion of those whose existence has its foundations in a world of fanciful, half-mad unreality. She was tall and thin, with a mass of dyed red hair (it must have gone gray ten years earlier) under an old-fashioned purple bonnet trimmed with purple plumes and perched high on her head in the fashion of the eighties. Madame Gigon knew she was by the gateaux . . . eating . . . eating . . . eating . . . as if she starved her self at home. Yet she too was rich.
"Ah, you don't know the Germans as I do!" came the high-pitched voice. "My fine young fellow! I tell you I have lived with them. I have been on business for the government. They are capable of anything. You will see . . ."
And then the voice of Schneidermann, mild and a little amused by the old lady. "Ah . . . ," gently. "Perhaps . . . perhaps. But I do not think that war is any longer possible."
"Nevertheless," persisted the voice. "One fine day you will go marching away like the rest."