The Ways of Men Part 4

"Yes," answers Jones, "are you?"

The company's tug has come alongside by this time, bringing its budget of letters and telegrams. The brief holiday is over. With a sigh one comes back to the positive and the present, and patiently resumes the harness of life.

CHAPTER 9-"Climbers" in England

The expression "Little Englander," much used of late to designate an inhabitant of the Mother Isle in contra-distinction to other subjects of Her Majesty, expresses neatly the feeling of our insular cousins not only as regards ourselves, but also the position affected toward their colonial brothers and sisters.

Have you ever noticed that in every circle there is some individual a.s.suming to do things better than his comrades-to know more, dress better, run faster, p.r.o.nounce more correctly? Who, unless promptly suppressed, will turn the conversation into a monologue relating to his own exploits and opinions. To differ is to bring down his contempt upon your devoted head! To argue is time wasted!

Human nature is, however, so const.i.tuted that a man of this type mostly succeeds in hypnotizing his hearers into sharing his estimate of himself, and impressing upon them the conviction that he is a rare being instead of a commonplace mortal. He is not a bad sort of person at bottom, and ready to do one a friendly turn-if it does not entail too great inconvenience. In short, a good fellow, whose princ.i.p.al defect is the profound conviction that he was born superior to the rest of mankind.

What this individual is to his environment, Englishmen are to the world at large. It is the misfortune, not the fault, of the rest of the human race, that they are not native to his island; a fact, by the way, which outsiders are rarely allowed to lose sight of, as it entails a becoming modesty on their part.

Few idiosyncrasies get more quickly on American nerves or are further from our hearty att.i.tude toward strangers. As we are far from looking upon wandering Englishmen with suspicion, it takes us some time to realize that Americans who cut away from their countrymen and settle far from home are regarded with distrust and reluctantly received. When a family of this kind prepares to live in their neighborhood, Britons have a formula of three questions they ask themselves concerning the new-comers: "Whom do they know? How much are they worth?" and "What amus.e.m.e.nt (or profit) are we likely to get out of them?" If the answer to all or any of the three queries is satisfactory, my lord makes the necessary advances and becomes an agreeable, if not a witty or original, companion.

Given this and a number of other peculiarities, it seems curious that a certain cla.s.s of Americans should be so anxious to live in England. What is it tempts them? It cannot be the climate, for that is vile; nor the city of London, for it is one of the ugliest in existence; nor their "cuisine"-for although we are not good cooks ourselves, we know what good food is and could give Britons points. Neither can it be art, nor the opera,-one finds both better at home or on the Continent than in England.

So it must be society, and here one's wonder deepens!

When I hear friends just back from a stay over there enlarging on the charms of "country life," or a London "season," I look attentively to see if they are in earnest, so incomparably dull have I always found English house parties or town entertainments. At least that side of society which the climbing stranger mostly affects. Other circles are charming, if a bit slow, and the "Bohemia" and semi-Bohemia of London have a delicate flavor of their own.

County society, that ideal life so attractive to American readers of British novels, is, taken on the whole, the most insipid existence conceivable. The women lack the sparkle and charm of ours; the men, who are out all day shooting or hunting according to the season, get back so f.a.gged that if they do not actually drop asleep at the dinner-table, they will nap immediately after, brightening only when the ladies have retired, when, with evening dress changed for comfortable smoking suits, the hunters congregate in the billiard-room for cigars and brandy and seltzer.

A particularly agreeable American woman, whose husband insists on going every winter to Melton-Mowbray for the hunting, was describing the other day the life there among the women, and expressing her wonder that those who did not hunt could refrain from blowing out their brains, so awful was the dulness and monotony! She had ended by not dining out at all, having discovered that the conversation never by any chance deviated far from the knees of the horses and the height of the hedges!

Which reminds one of Thackeray relating how he had longed to know what women talked about when they were alone after dinner, imagining it to be on mysterious and thrilling subjects, until one evening he overheard such a conversation and found it turned entirely on children and ailments! As regards wit, the English are like the Oriental potentate who at a ball in Europe expressed his astonishment that the guests took the trouble to dance and get themselves hot and dishevelled, explaining that in the East he paid people to do that for him. In England "amusers" are invited expressly to be funny; anything uttered by one of these delightful individuals is sure to be received with much laughter. It is so simple that way! One is prepared and knows when to laugh. Whereas amateur wit is confusing. When an American I knew, turning over the books on a drawing-room table and finding Hare's _Walks in London_, in two volumes, said, "So you part your hair in the middle over here," the remark was received in silence, and with looks of polite surprise.

It is not necessary, however, to acc.u.mulate proofs that this much described society is less intelligent than our own. Their authors have acknowledged it, and well they may. For from Scott and d.i.c.kens down to Hall Caine, American appreciation has gone far toward establis.h.i.+ng the reputation of English writers at home.

In spite of lack of humor and a thousand other defects which ought to make English swelldom antagonistic to our countrymen, the fact remains that "smart" London tempts a certain number of Americans and has become a promised land, toward which they turn longing eyes. You will always find a few of these votaries over there in the "season," struggling bravely up the social current, making acquaintances, spending money at charity sales, giving dinners and fetes, taking houses at Ascot and filling them with their new friends' friends. With more or less success as the new-comers have been able to return satisfactory answers to the three primary questions.

What Americans are these, who force us to blush for them infinitely more than for the unlettered tourists trotting conscientiously around the country, doing the sights and asking for soda-water and buckwheat cakes at the hotels!

Any one who has been an observer of the genus "Climber" at home, and wondered at their way and courage, will recognize these ambitious souls abroad; five minutes' conversation is enough. It is never about a place that they talk, but of the people they know. London to them is not the city of d.i.c.kens. It is a place where one may meet the Prince of Wales and perhaps obtain an entrance into his set.

One description will cover most climbers. They are, as a rule, people who start humbly in some small city, then when fortune comes, push on to New York and Newport, where they carry all before them and make their houses centres and themselves powers. Next comes the discovery that the circle into which they have forced their way is not nearly as attractive as it appeared from a distance. Consequently that vague disappointment is felt which most of us experience on attaining a long desired goal-the unsatisfactoriness of success! Much the same sensation as caused poor Du Maurier to answer, when asked shortly before his death why he looked so glum, "I'm soured by success!"

So true is this of all human nature that the following recipe might be given for the attainment of perfect happiness: "Begin far down in any walk of life. Rise by your efforts higher each year, and then be careful to die before discovering that there is nothing at the top. The excitement of the struggle-'the rapture of the chase'-are greater joys than achievement."

Our ambitious friends naturally ignore this bit of philosophy. When it is discovered that the "world" at home has given but an unsatisfactory return for cash and conniving, it occurs to them that the fault lies in the circle, and they a.s.sume that their particular talents require a larger field. Having conquered all in sight, these social Alexanders pine for a new world, which generally turns out to be the "Old," so a crossing is made, and the "Conquest of England" begun with all the enthusiasm and push employed on starting out from the little native city twenty years before.

It is in Victoria's realm that foemen worthy of their steel await the conquerors. Home society was a too easy prey, opening its doors and laying down its arms at the first summons. In England the new-comers find that their little game has been played before; and, well, what they imagined was a discovery proves to be a long-studied science with "_donnant_! _donnant_!" as its fundamental law. Wily opponents with trump cards in their hands and a profound knowledge of "Hoyle" smilingly offer them seats. Having acquired in a home game a knowledge of "bluff,"

our friends plunge with delight into the fray, only to find English society so formed that, climb they never so wisely, the top can never be reached. Work as hard as they may, succeed even beyond their fondest hopes, there will always remain circles above, toward which to yearn-people who will refuse to know them, houses they will never be invited to enter. Think of the charm, the attraction such a civilization must have for the real born climber, and you, my reader, will understand why certain of our compatriots enjoy living in England, and why when once the intoxicating draught (supplied to the ambitious on the other side) has been tasted, all home concoctions prove insipid.

CHAPTER 10-_Calve_ at Cabrieres

While I was making a "cure" last year at Lamalou, an obscure Spa in the Cevennes Mountains, Madame Calve, to whom I had expressed a desire to see her picturesque home, telegraphed an invitation to pa.s.s the day with her, naming the train she could meet, which would allow for the long drive to her chateau before luncheon. It is needless to say the invitation was accepted. As my train drew up at the little station, Madame Calve, in her trap, was the first person I saw, and no time was lost in getting _en route_.

During the hour pa.s.sed on the poplar-bordered road that leads straight and white across the country I had time to appreciate the transformation in the woman at my side. Was this gray-clad, nunlike figure the pa.s.sionate, sensuous Carmen of Bizet's masterpiece? Could that calm, pale face, crossed by innumerable lines of suffering, as a spider's web lies on a flower, blaze and pant with Sappho's guilty love?

Something of these thoughts must have appeared on my face, for turning with a smile, she asked, "You find me changed? It's the air of my village. Here I'm myself. Everywhere else I'm different. On the stage I am any part I may be playing, but am never really happy away from my hill there." As she spoke, a sun-baked hamlet came in sight, huddled around the base of two tall towers that rose cool and gray in the noonday heat.

"All that wing," she added, "is arranged for the convalescent girls whom I have sent down to me from the Paris hospitals for a cure of fresh air and simple food. Six years ago, just after I had bought this place, a series of operations became necessary which left me prostrated and anaemic. No tonics were of benefit. I grew weaker day by day, until the doctors began to despair of my life. Finally, at the advice of an old woman here who pa.s.ses for being something of a curer, I tried the experiment or lying five or six hours a day motionless in the sunlight.

It wasn't long before I felt life creeping back to my poor feeble body.

The hot sun of our magic south was a more subtle tonic than any drug.

When the cure was complete, I made up my mind that each summer the same chance should be offered to as many of my suffering sisters as this old place could be made to accommodate."

The bells on the s.h.a.ggy Tarbes ponies she was driving along the Languedoc road drew, on nearing her residence, a number of peasant children from their play.

As the ruddy urchins ran shouting around our carriage wheels and scrambled in the dust for the sous we threw them, my hostess pointed laughing to a scrubby little girl with tomato-colored cheeks and tousled dark hair, remarking, "I looked like that twenty years ago and performed just those antics on this very road. No punishment would keep me off the highway. Those pennies, if I'm not mistaken, will all be spent at the village pastry cook's within an hour."

This was said with such a tender glance at the children that one realized the great artist was at home here, surrounded by the people she loved and understood. True to the "homing" instinct of the French peasant, Madame Calve, when fortune came to her, bought and partially restored the rambling chateau which at sunset casts its shadow across the village of her birth. Since that day every moment of freedom from professional labor and every penny of her large income are spent at Cabrieres, building, planning, even farming, when her health permits.

"I think," she continued, as we approached the chateau, "that the happiest day of my life-and I have, as you know, pa.s.sed some hours worth living, both on and off the stage-was when, that wing completed, a Paris train brought the first occupants for my twenty little bedrooms; no words can tell the delight it gives me now to see the color coming back to my patients' pale lips and hear them laughing and singing about the place.

As I am always short of funds, the idea of abandoning this work is the only fear the future holds for me."

With the vivacity peculiar to her character, my companion then whipped up her cobs and turned the conversation into gayer channels. Five minutes later we clattered over a drawbridge and drew up in a roomy courtyard, half blinding sunlight and half blue shadow, where a score of girls were occupied with books and sewing.

The luncheon bell was ringing as we ascended the terrace steps. After a hurried five minutes for brus.h.i.+ng and was.h.i.+ng, we took our places at a long table set in the cool stone hall, guests stopping in the chateau occupying one end around the chatelaine, the convalescents filling the other seats.

Those who have only seen the capricious diva on the stage or in Parisian salons can form little idea of the proprietress of Cabrieres. No shade of coquetry blurs the clear picture of her home life. The capped and saboted peasant women who waited on us were not more simple in their ways. Several times during the meal she left her seat to inquire after the comfort of some invalid girl or inspect the cooking in the adjacent kitchen. These wanderings were not, however, allowed to disturb the conversation, which flowed on after the mellow French fas.h.i.+on, enlivened by much wit and gay badinage. One of our hostess's anecdotes at her own expense was especially amusing.

"When in Venice," she told us, "most prima donnas are carried to and from the opera in sedan chairs to avoid the risk of colds from the draughty gondolas. The last night of my initial season there, I was informed, as the curtain fell, that a number of Venetian n.o.bles were planning to carry me in triumph to the hotel. When I descended from my dressing-room the courtyard of the theatre was filled with men in dress clothes, bearing lanterns, who caught up the chair as soon as I was seated and carried it noisily across the city to the hotel. Much moved by this unusual honor, I mounted to the balcony of my room, from which elevation I bowed my thanks, and threw all the flowers at hand to my escort.

"Next morning the hotel proprietor appeared with my coffee, and after hesitating a moment, remarked: 'Well, we made a success of it last night.

It has been telegraphed to all the capitals of Europe! I hope you will not think a thousand francs too much, considering the advertis.e.m.e.nt!' In blank amazement, I asked what he meant. 'I mean the triumphal progress,'

he answered. 'I thought you understood! We always organize one for the "stars" who visit Venice. The men who carried your chair last night were the waiters from the hotels. We hire them on account of their dress clothes'! Think of the disillusion," added Calve, laughing, "and my disgust, when I thought of myself navely throwing kisses and flowers to a group of Swiss garcons at fifteen francs a head. There was nothing to do, however, but pay the bill and swallow my chagrin!"

How many pretty women do you suppose would tell such a joke upon themselves? Another story she told us is characteristic of her peasant neighbors.

"When I came back here after my first season in St. Petersburg and London the _cure_ requested me to sing at our local fete. I gladly consented, and, standing by his side on the steps of the _Mairie_, gave the great aria from the _Huguenots_ in my best manner. To my astonishment the performance was received in complete silence. 'Poor Calve,' I heard an old friend of my mother's murmur. 'Her voice used to be so nice, and now it's all gone!' Taking in the situation at a glance, I threw my voice well up into my nose and started off on a well-known provincial song, in the shrill falsetto of our peasant women. The effect was instantaneous!

Long before the end the performance was drowned in thunders of applause.

Which proves that to be popular a singer must adapt herself to her audience."

Luncheon over, we repaired for cigarettes and coffee to an upper room, where Calve was giving Dagnan-Bouveret some sittings for a portrait, and lingered there until four o'clock, when our hostess left us for her siesta, and a "break" took those who cared for the excursion across the valley to inspect the ruins of a Roman bath. A late dinner brought us together again in a small dining room, the convalescents having eaten their simple meal and disappeared an hour before. During this time, another transformation had taken place in our mercurial hostess! It was the Calve of Paris, Calve the witch, Calve the _capiteuse_, who presided at the dainty, flower-decked table and led the laughing conversation.

A few notes struck on a guitar by one of the party, as we sat an hour later on the moonlit terrace, were enough to start off the versatile artist, who was in her gayest humor. She sang us stray bits of opera, alternating her music with scenes burlesqued from recent plays. No one escaped her inimitable mimicry, not even the "divine Sarah," Calve giving us an unpayable impersonation of the elderly _tragedienne_ as Lorenzaccio, the boy hero of Alfred de Musset's drama. Burlesquing led to her dancing some Spanish steps with an abandon never attempted on the stage! Which in turn gave place to an imitation of an American whistling an air from _Carmen_, and some "c.o.o.n songs" she had picked up during her stay at New York. They, again, were succeeded by a superb rendering of the imprecation from Racine's _Camille_, which made her audience realize that in gaining a soprano the world has lost, perhaps, its greatest _tragedienne_.

At eleven o'clock the clatter of hoofs in the court warned us that the pleasant evening had come to an end. A journalist _en route_ for Paris was soon installed with me in the little omnibus that was to take us to the station, Calve herself lighting our cigars and providing the wraps that were to keep out the cool night air.

As we pa.s.sed under the low archway of the entrance amid a clamor of "adieu" and "au revoir," the young Frenchman at my side pointed up to a row of closed windows overhead. "Isn't it a lesson," he said, "for all of us, to think of the occupants of those little rooms, whom the generosity and care of that gracious artist are leaning by such pleasant paths back to health and courage for their toilsome lives?"