The Pools of Silence Part 3

They crossed the hall, Captain Berselius opened a door, motioned his companion to enter, and Adams found himself in a room, half morning room, half boudoir. A bright log fire was burning, and on either side of the fireplace two women--a girl of about eighteen and a woman of thirty-five or so--were seated.

The elder woman, Madame Berselius, a Parisienne, pale, stout, yet well-proportioned, with almond-shaped eyes; full lips exquisitely cut in the form of the true cupid's bow; and with a face vigorous enough, but veiled by an expression at once mulish, blindish, and indolent--was a type.

The type of the poodle woman, the parasite. With the insolent expression of a j.a.panese lady of rank, an insult herself to the human race, you will see her everywhere in the highest social ranks of society. At the Zoological Gardens of Madrid on a Sunday, when the grandees of Spain take their pleasure amidst the animals at Longchamps, in Rotten Row, Was.h.i.+ngton Square, Unter den Linden, wherever money is, growing like an evil fungus, she flourishes.

Opposite Madame Berselius sat her daughter, Maxine.

Adams, after his first glance at the two women, saw only Maxine.

Maxine had golden-brown hair, worn after the fas.h.i.+on of Cleo de Merode's, gray eyes, and a wide mouth, with pomegranate-red lips. Goethe's dictum that the highest beauty is un.o.btainable without something of disproportion was exemplified in the case of Maxine Berselius. "Her mouth is too wide,"

said the women, who, knowing nothing of the philosophy of art, hit upon the defect that was Maxine's main charm.

Berselius introduced Adams to his wife and daughter, and scarcely had he done so than a servant, in the blue-and-gold livery of the house, flung open the door and announced that _dejeuner_ was served.

Adams scarcely noticed the room into which they pa.s.sed; a room whose scheme of colour was that watery green which we a.s.sociate with the scenery of early spring, the call of the cuckoo, and the river echoes where the weir foams and the willow droops.

The tapestry hanging upon the walls did not distract from this scheme.

Taken from some chateau of Provence, and old almost as the story of Nicolete, it showed ladies listening to shepherds who played on flutes, capering lambs, daffodils blowing to the winds of early spring under a sky gray and broken by rifts of blue.

Adams scarcely noticed the room, or the tapestry, or the food placed before him; he was entirely absorbed by two things, Maxine and Captain Berselius.

Berselius's presence at the table evidently cast silence and a cloak of restraint upon the women. You could see that the servants who served him dreaded him to the very tips of their fingers, and, though he was chatting easily and in an almost paternal manner, his wife and daughter had almost the air of children, nervous, and on their very best behaviour. This was noticeable, especially, in Madame Berselius. The beautiful, indolent, arrogant face became a very humble face indeed when she turned it on the man who was evidently, literally, her lord and master. Maxine, though oppressed by the presence, wore a different air; she seemed abstracted and utterly unconscious of what a beautiful picture she made against the old-world tapestry of spring.

Her eyes sometimes met the American's. They scarcely spoke to each other once during the meal, yet their eyes met almost as frequently as though they had been conversing. As a matter of fact, Adams was a new type of man to her, and on that account interesting; very different was this son of Anak, with the restful, forceful face, to the curled and scented dandies of the Chaussee d'Antin, the "captains with the little moustaches," the frequenters of the _foyer de Ballet_, the cigarette-dried mummies of the Grand Club. It was like the view of a mountain to a person who had only known hills.

Maxine, in her turn, was a new type of woman to Adams. This perfect flower from the Parisian hot-house was the rarest and most beautiful thing he had met in the way of womanhood. She seemed to him a rose only just unfolded, unconscious of its own freshness and beauty as of the dew upon its petals, and saying to the world, by the voice of its own loveliness, "Behold me!"

"Well," said Captain Berselius, as he took leave of his guest in the smoking room, "I will let you know to-night the day and hour of our departure. All my business in Paris will be settled this afternoon. You had better come and see me the day before we start, so that we can make our last arrangements. _Au revoir._"

CHAPTER IV

SCHAUNARD

The young man turned down the Avenue Malakoff, after he had left Berselius's house, in the direction of the Avenue des Champs Elysees.

In twenty-four hours a complete change had taken place in his life. His line of travel had taken a new and most unexpected course; it was as though a train on the North German had, suddenly, by some mysterious arrangement of points and tracks, found itself on the Paris-Lyons and Mediterranean Railway.

Yesterday afternoon the prospect before him, though vague enough, was American. A practice in some big central American town. It would be a hard fight, for money was scanty, and in medicine, especially in the States, advertis.e.m.e.nt counts for very much.

All that was changed now, and the hard, definite prospect that had elbowed itself out of vagueness stood before him: Africa, its palms and poisonous forests, the Congo--Berselius.

Something else besides these things also stood before him very definitely and almost casting them into shade. Maxine.

Up to this, a woman had never stood before him as a possible part of his future, if we except Mary Eliza Summers, the eleven-year-old daughter of old Abe Summers, who kept the store in Dodgeville, Vermont, years ago--that is to say, when Paul Quincy Adams was twelve, an orchard-robbing hooligan, whose chief worry in life was that, though he could thrash his eldest brother left-handed, he was condemned by the law of entail to wear his old pants.

When a man falls in love with a woman--really in love--though the attainment of his desire be all but impossible, he has reached the goal of life; no tide can take him higher toward the Absolute. He has reached life's zenith, and never will he rise higher, even though he live to wield a sceptre or rule armies.

Adams reached the Place de la Concorde on foot, walking and taking his way mechanically, and utterly unconscious of the pa.s.sers-by.

He was studying in minute detail Maxine Berselius, the pose of her head outlined against the tapestry, the curves of her lips that could speak so well without speaking, the little sh.e.l.l-like ears, the brown-gold coils of her hair, her hands, her dress.

He was standing undetermined as to his route, and whether he would cross over to the Rue St. Honore or turn toward the Seine, when someone gripped his arm from behind, and, turning, he found himself face to face with Dr.

Stenhouse, an English physician who had set up in Paris, practising in the Boulevard Haussmann and flouris.h.i.+ng exceedingly.

"Well, this is luck," said Stenhouse. "I lost your address, or I would have written, asking you to come and see us. I remembered it was over on the other side of the water somewhere, but where exactly I could not remember. What are you doing with yourself?"

"Nothing, just at present."

"Well, see here. I'm going to the Rue du Mont Thabor to see a patient; walk along with me--it's quite close, just behind the Rue St. Honore."

They crossed the Place de la Concorde.

"You have finished your post-graduate work, I expect," said Stenhouse.

"Are you going to practise in the States?"

"Ultimately, I may," replied Adams. "I have always intended doing so; but I have to feel my way very cautiously, for the money market is not in a particularly flouris.h.i.+ng state with me."

"Good heavens!" said Stenhouse, "when is it with a medical man, especially when he is just starting? I've been through that. See here, why don't you start in Paris?"

"Paris?"

"Yes, this is the place to make money. You say you are thinking of starting in some American city; well, let me tell you, there are very few American cities so full of rich Americans as Paris."

"Well," said Adams, "the idea is not a bad one, but just for the present I am fixed. I am going on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo."

"As doctor?"

"Yes, and the salary is not bad--two thousand francs a month and everything found, to say nothing of the fun."

"And the malaria?"

"Oh, one has to run risks."

"Whom are you going with?"

"A man called Berselius."

"Not Captain Berselius?" asked Stenhouse, stopping dead.

"Yes, Captain Berselius, of No. 14 Avenue Malakoff. I have just returned from having _dejeuner_ with him."

Stenhouse whistled. They were in the Rue du Mont Thabor by this, in front of a small _cafe_.

"Well," said Adams, "what's wrong?"