Читать книгу Wanton Mally - Booth Tarkington - Страница 4

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onsieur de Grammont, most light-hearted of all Seventeenth Century young gentlemen, and more light-hearted than ever in exile, was delighted one March morning, after too merry a night with King Charles at Whitehall, to receive a compatriot who was, like himself, youthful, a fine flower from the garden of Versailles, and bore gayly another resemblance even more striking. Like M. de Grammont, the caller had the honor of banishment at the hands of Louis XIV personally, so to say; moreover, the distinction had been conferred upon him only some three-score hours earlier, and this Chevalier de Champvallon stepped softly into M. de Grammont’s bedchamber, spurred, cloaked and elaborately stained with fast travel. There had been rain in the north of France, and there were innumerable small poultices of dried mud upon his boots, spurs and thin scabbard, upon his exquisite gauntlets embroidered with gold thread and upon his beautiful blue cuirass; but the English roads were dry and had powdered him impartially everywhere. M. de Champvallon, though instantly recognizable as a great fellow for good lace and daintiness in dress, seemed unaware of carrying the tokens of two national soils. Neither fatigue nor this palpable evidence of flight from one country to another seemed to trouble him; apparently nothing troubled him or could be permitted to alter the lift of his fine eyebrows and the delicate extension of his lips in the Versailles smile that expressed a gentleman’s proper detachment from whatever either agreeably or disagreeably happened to him.

M. de Grammont was being dressed while finishing his morning cup of chocolate; but he rose to offer a formal embrace not devoid of real cordiality. “My dear friend! What surprise!”

“One to me also,” M. de Champvallon said, as they sat and M. de Grammont’s dressing continued. “But you are the last man to whom I need explain that a condition of astonishment is precisely the condition upon which one is admitted to be near the person of the Sun King. I am your comrade in two things: surprise and exile.” M. de Champvallon, not rising, bowed appreciatively. “I am sensible of the honor.”

“No; it is mine,” M. de Grammont said, and bowed as gracefully. “I permit myself to imagine that you yourself may have surprised somebody and—”

“No; I am not so intrusive,” M. de Champvallon interrupted, and increased his smile delicately. “The intrusion was upon myself, most unexpectedly, though it is true that I was at once charged with intrusion and by an august personage. But I accept the responsibility for demolishing my career: I knew perfectly that it is a crime to whisper in sea-shell ears behind the curtains of a window embrasure at Marly—that is, when those ears are precious to the august. My only excuse is that I did not know the grand old he-cat was so near.”

“He-cat, my dear Champvallon?”

“Pardon my irreverence, my dear friend; I am so newly a fugitive. To me the Grand Monarch appears to have a touch of he-cattery. I beg you to recall that passage in Herodotus in which he describes those gentlemen, the he-cats of Egypt. You are not the only victim of a royal cannibalism no doubt imitated from the behavior of those gentlemen. Once more I have the honor to be your confrère.”

“What happiness for me!” The two bowed again; M. de Grammont laughed, then looked at a shoe a valet was offering for inspection and gently waved it away. “No, not scarlet heels this morning,” he said, and explained to de Champvallon, “The English are eager to improve themselves; they imitate me with such enthusiasm that within a few days after I have set a fashion I must again become original in order to avoid dressing like everybody. Herodotus, you said. I must remember to speak of that passage to the King of England this evening. He will be delighted to hear that you made so happy a comparison between his cousin and the old he-cats of Egypt who slew all the young ones in order to prevent a subsequent rivalry.”

M. de Champvallon sighed lightly. “I suppose it is a slander,” he said, with a little compunction. “Perhaps we young he-cats are too given to thinking that someone is jealous of us, and also, it is difficult for us to know which of two things in a prince growing elderly we have offended. We like to think it is his jealousy; but it may be his sense of propriety. There is a great deal more propriety at Versailles since you left there, my dear friend. I will not flatter you; your absence has nothing to do with it. It is all because the Grand Monarch feels that at his age propriety captivates not only the celestial powers but his children’s governess also.”

“The little Scarron! My dear Champvallon, in your case, who was the lady?”

“The lady?” M. de Champvallon smiled reproachfully. “There were two, a circumstance proving that my life is shattered for mere pastime. But I hasten to assure you that neither of the ladies was Madame Scarron nor the one to whom your own pleasant whisperings brought a disturbance of the heart so perceptible as to overheat the temper of Majesty. My two were less disturbed than was your one, and, as I am so much smaller a personage than yourself, the royal disturbance was not comparable to that you caused; but it was sufficient! I had a hurried choice between flight and Pignerol; I feared Pignerol might be mouldy. I reached the barbarous English coast at Dover last night in a fishing-boat, and here I am, asking advice of your experience.”

“My dear friend!” M. de Grammont exclaimed benevolently. “I have better than experience to offer you.”

“No, no! I am not here to plunder you of anything but wisdom; I have even a diamond or two to give away if need be. In truth I desire nothing but to ask you about these English. What species of animal are they?”

In spite of his benevolence M. de Grammont was a little relieved. “You have come to the right man, my dear Champvallon. My advice to you is to pass the time of exile in studying the customs and habits of the English; thus you will improve your mind and find entertainment. It is simple, for at this court you will not even need to know the language.”

“But I do—perhaps even better than a Frenchman should. I suppose it is pardonable for a fugitive to praise himself like that. I accept your advice with gratitude and I begin my study of the English this very moment by learning all I can from you. How does one amuse oneself among them?”

M. de Grammont laughed inaudibly. “You will have no difficulty there, since they are all bent upon amusing themselves. A few years ago they were all devoutly forcing themselves into heaven by means of a piety based upon sermons and decapitations. Now they do nothing but what is outrageously in the comic spirit. You see, they lack our French stability of character; they are the most volatile people in the world, the English. They have not known how to do what we do in our settled state of society; they do not from generation to generation go on living in the same way, with so much time given to the church, so much to government, so much to war, so much to gallantry, so much to the humanities and the arts, so much to a cultivation of the society of other beings as civilized as ourselves, and so much to acquiring a perfect comprehension of what food, wine and tailors should be. In fact, they are not very civilized. They are a people always in ferment, never poised in the centre of things but always living in one barbarous extreme or the other. In a word, dear Champvallon, this is an epoch when they wish to make the devil drunk and will get drunk with him. You may do anything you please in England; you may steal the Crown Jewels if your manner of taking them makes the King laugh. Yet he is a man not without some elegance—a great part of his youth was spent in France. I will take you to him this evening.”

M. de Champvallon inclined his head in gratitude but smiled with a faint ruefulness. “That is like your kindness, my friend; I will not press upon it so heavily. No, I have heard it said that when an Arab visits a hospitable stranger’s tent he should not bring his camel in with him—I must not be your camel. I have a thought, too, that the Sun King might not be so indulgent with his English cousin in regard to me as he is in your own affair. Letters might pass between the King Louis and the King Charles, and a mere little de Champvallon of the cadet branch might be returned in the direction of Pignerol. Finally, for myself, I have a small surfeit of association with a king and a court.”

“But what do you wish to do? These people have nothing like the life of our châteaux; but they do possess some heavy houses in the country, and if your fancies incline to the pastoral—”

“No,” de Champvallon said, and lifted a protesting, slim hand. “My desires are all urban. I should like to study the amusements of this London. Life in the country has no charm for me. I confess you have said something that fascinates me; you have declared that these people have a trace of savagery in their merriment, and I know enough of history to be sure that when a people go to extremes their supreme extremity is always reached in their greatest town. My tastes are a little mad. If you will be so generous, direct me to the wild life of London.”

“Willingly.” M. de Grammont touched his forehead with a finger or two. “But you puzzle me, for what you seek is at court, and you say you will not go there. But wait! I will think.” He plunged himself into some moments of cogitation; then brightened suddenly. “But yes! I have what you desire. Perfectly! Meestress Jeeny Feelmotte!”

“How?” de Champvallon asked, and for the moment had no comprehension that his friend had attempted to pronounce an English name. “What is that?”

“Meestress Jeeny Feelmotte,” M. de Grammont replied decisively. “She is the right one for you. She is what you seek and she will also show you what you seek.”

“You are speaking of somebody? Of a woman?”

“Of a woman decidedly.”

M. de Champvallon’s expression, remotely amiable by habit, increased in affability. “Married? Beautiful?”

“Hélas! Neither,” M. de Grammont said, and again laughed soundlessly. “Well, I must prepare you for her a little. She is like nothing that anything in your whole life in France could have led you to expect to see. For you, just arrived on this soil, many things in England are unimaginable; she most of all. Yet I must attempt a little portrait of her for you. I think one reason she is not married is that the only husband she could consider would be Master Satan, and she knows him well but finds him too decorous. You begin to catch a glimpse of her, my friend?”

“I begin to be profoundly interested. Continue, I beg.”

“Very well. A moment of history will not fatigue you. You see, the revolution of those Fanatiques, some years ago, made all of England very gloomy, very dull; everything was Olivier Cronvell and sanctimony. Whatever was natural, gay or pretty was a sin. Now all that is overthrown, and in particular a new kind of woman has emerged. To comprehend her, you must not think of the Mancini or of Mademoiselle de Lenclos. They are only examples of something that is always produced at intervals by any civilization; the new woman of England is the representative of this new epoch; Mademoiselle Feelmotte is the apex of a revolution against the old revolution; she is the extreme of a class of young people who hate with venom everything that is old-fashioned, hypocritical and restricting. They abolish everything except frankness and liberty. Mademoiselle Feelmotte believes a woman may do anything that a man may, and she does! I should add that she has followers of both sexes who sometimes finds themselves staggering in the effort to keep pace with her. You, my dear Champvallon, will be equal to her and yet remain upon your feet. I speak in admiration born of some knowledge of you.”

“I thank you,” M. de Champvallon said, responding with gravity to a twinkle in his friend’s eye. “You insist that she has no beauty?”

“Oh, I do not go so far! Her face is thought an odd one—delicately moulded but not by the best of sculptors, and perhaps a little yellow. She does not permit this to discourage her, for she possesses and uses most adroitly those compensations with which Madame Venus seeks to console ladies whose faces are not called pretty. Extraordinary eyes, extraordinary hair. The eyes lovely, not to be read and perhaps a little sly; the hair a blonde marvel, superbly curled. The form as magnificent as the eyes and hair and as freely made known to you; the voice low, a little husky and as ready to say anything as she is to do anything. For a final stroke upon my canvas, she is not so rich as our own Grande Montpensier; but she is rich. She is an orphan, keeps her guardians in a swoon and last month set fire to a tavern because the food displeased her.”

“You have done the same thing to me!” M. de Champvallon exclaimed, with a pleasant animation. “Not I hope because I displease you! I am overcome by your kindness and also by the penetration that perceives so precisely what I had hoped to find in London. When may I be led into the presence of this enchanting wickedness?”

“Éh, not so fast! I will not give you up so quickly,” M. de Grammont said. “Once you are with her I shall not soon see you again. In the afternoon I will deliver you to each other. Now we shall have breakfast, and then I think you should have an hour or two of repose before—”

“Repose!” The more recent of the two exiles looked at the other aggrievedly. “Repose for me, my friend?”

“Ah, pardon, pardon!” de Grammont cried, as his servants placed a table between himself and his guest. “My memory is as infamous as your sleeplessness is famous. I recall that it was spiteful little St. Simon who said, ‘Champvallon never rests; he should be a sentry’. Again this Meestress Jeeny Feelmotte is the right one for you! One morning when the King of England awoke he asked for the news and someone told him it was said in the town that Mademoiselle Feelmotte had slept peacefully for several hours the previous night. The King said he had asked for news not for lies, and I prefer not to tell you what else he said. I have talked enough; now tell me all the news of Versailles—and then in two or three hours I will surrender you to your study of this new woman and her barbarians.”

M. de Champvallon’s modesty urged him to look doubtful for a moment, and he yielded to the pressure, inclining his head a little toward one shoulder. “But of course we have not ascertained that this demoiselle will be willing to undertake my education. It is only too well known how often I have failed in my efforts to please the most honest ladies.”

“Ah, traitor!” M. de Grammont cried, and wagged a chiding, white forefinger at him. “I am like the King of England; I have asked for news and not for lies. Mademoiselle Feelmotte will throw herself at my feet in gratitude for you!”