All Kneeling/Chapter 11
It was a Paris Christabel had not known before, under the Tomb of Napoleon Louvre Now Girls chaperonage of Edith Johnson Plummer. After London it seemed like heaven, at first. It was enough just to have salad mean brittle ice-green frills of lettuce and dark needles of chopped chives instead of a stew of tinned fruits; just to pour crystals of Jasmin, Giroflée Jaune, L'Heure Exquire, into her baths; to have hot golden café au lait and flaky croissants instead of mud and water and cold toast; to get into a taxi with her arms full of packages and say "The Ritz." She brought back packages, she had them sent, their rooms rattled with tissue paper as Minnie unpacked boxes. "When I was here before I bought a chemise and nightie to match, and thought I had Paris lingerie!" she told Curtis with amused tenderness for the child she had been, while the waiter tried to find room for their breakfast tray among drifts of silk and chiffon, apricot, ivory, and mauve.
But after a while she grew restless. Perhaps we ought to see other people, she thought, looking through the Herald to see if she could find any names she knew. We mustn't let our happiness make us selfish.
And what was the use of all her new gowns if there was no one to show them to? Curtis never noticed what she had on, unless she called his attention to it, and even with her generous Curtis it was just as well not to call attention to too many all at once, for when you are a type that demands special creations, dresses are expensive. Their first misunderstanding had come when he had seen the bill for the seven picture gowns. And after he had said that he wanted to spend his whole life in making her happy! She had been so hurt that he had given her a sapphire bracelet next day. She twisted it on her wrist now. Dark blue fire on snow.
That all the more endears—"
Curtis was out looking up a business connection, and she was bored and lonely. She didn't want to write, she didn't want to read, she didn't want to stay indoors, and yet she could think of nothing she wanted to go shopping for. Still, in Paris one could always buy gloves.
As she stepped out of the lift she saw Gobby Witherspoon.
"Gobby!"
"For Heaven's sake! Christabel!"
Darling Gobby! Dear, faithful, loving Gobby! She let her hands lie in his.
"How did you know I was here? And how did you know that this afternoon, of all afternoons, I needed you?"
"My subconscious must have gotten a message, because my conscious certainly thought you were still in London."
"And you felt me here so strongly that you came to me! My dear, do you know that touches something very deep?"
They looked at each other deeply. And then her mood changed. She clapped her hands.
"Now can you play with me a little while, Gobby? I'm all alone this afternoon. Curtis had other things to do. Can't we just wander about like a couple of children on a holiday, and be utterly silly and happy?"
"I'd love to, but"
"Perhaps you have an engagement?"
"Oh no! But—if you'll just excuse me one minute—I"
"Certainly, Gobby."
"I—well, you see my garter broke, and I came in to fix it"
He really is a little absurd, she thought, waiting for him. Subconsciousness, indeed! Sometimes she couldn't help feeling that he wasn't as real a person as he might be, that he was inclined to pose. But her heart warmed to him again as he came back, rather pink, from fixing his garter.
"Let's go somewhere away from the shops, Gobby. I'm sick of them. How horrid of me to say that! When my Curtis has been so generous, so much too generous to me! But I'm so tired of being dressed up like a big doll—I want to be a woman, a breathing, feeling woman, not a beautiful doll that opens and shuts her eyes and wears pretty clothes."
"Aren't you happy, Christabel?"
"Oh yes, I suppose so. At least—is anyone happy? Oh, what's the use of not being honest with you, Gobby? You, being you, would know, no matter what I told you. I'm happy this afternoon, anyway! Look at those big fern-fringed willow baskets full of snails! Look at those apples with flowers and stars—what do they do, paste paper patterns on them before they're ripe? I'd rather have that pink-and-yellow apple with the pale green hearts on it than all the jewels in the Rue de la Paix."
"You haven't changed, thank God!"
"Haven't I, Gobby? I feel as if I had. I wouldn't say this to anyone in the world but you, but I feel changed to the depths of my soul. But let's not talk about me; let's talk about you. Oh, Gobby dear, this is heaven! My big boy loves the restaurants that everybody goes to, and the theaters, places where you meet every American in Paris! And I can't let him know that I don't enjoy them. I put on my pretty new dresses, and I try to pretend I'm loving it all as much as he is. That's what a woman has to learn, through love and pity, to pretend she's happy doing whatever her man wants to do. But men don't pretend—they're like children that way, I think. Curtis is a sweet person, but he just couldn't understand the thrill of playing around like this, and why I love it so. Gobby! My dear! A street fair!"
"What shall I buy you? I want to buy you something."
"Buy me that gingerbread pig named René—no, no, this one named Louis—and I'll keep it forever to remember you by."
They looked at strong men and white mice, and Gobby modestly averted his eyes from four respectable Parisians, two beards, two black silk dresses, squeezed into a giant pot-de-chambre on the merry-go-round, answering with shrill screams the light-hearted remarks of bystanding friends. Then, leaving the fair, they paused for refreshments outside a cafe.
"An aperitif for me, please."
"Deux aperitifs—oh! non, un moment! Un aperitif pour madame et une tasse de chocolat pour moi."
"Thank you, sir. Any pastry?"
"Oh, oui, pâtisserie assortt. I'm crazy about that frock, Christabel, that little glimpse of lemon-yellow sash is heavenly with the green, but you mustn't wear that hat with it, my dear! The color's all right, but the line isn't you. I'll have to take you to a wonderful place where they make hats on your head. Are you sure you aren't just being unselfish, leaving that coffee éclair for me?"
"It's being a wonderful afternoon, Gobby! It's giving me fresh courage to go on with."
"I wish you were happier."
"Is it so very important? And I have been happy this afternoon, thanks to you! But I don't want to talk about me—you're such an understanding person you lead me astray. Tell me about yourself. Have you seen Elliott since—I?"
"I went to see him the day after your wedding. I wonder if I ought to tell you about it? Of course I don't have to ask you never to breathe a word to a soul."
"Of course not, Gobby!"
"Well, I thought he'd be pretty low—you know—so I hurried down from the train; I thought maybe I could sort of cheer him up or something, well, not exactly cheer him up, but, anyway, I went down, and of course I went in without knocking, as usual—don't ever tell!"
"Gobby, don't you know me?"
"Well, he was standing there with a face like death, and holding a blue bottle. I didn't stop to speak, even; I just ran at him and dashed it out of his hand and it smashed to the floor. I saw a piece of the bottle; it had a skull and cross-bones on it!"
"Oh, Gobby! Oh, my poor, poor Elliott! Thank God you got there in time!"
"Of course I pretended it was an accident. I think I said I was trying to catch a moth or something, and that my foot slipped. And he was wonderful, Christabel, the way he pulled himself together. You'd have been proud of him. He got off some story about developing some photographs and having to have acids and things."
"Oh, what courage! What a gallant lie!"
"Of course he did have a lot of other bottles and powders and things there. He might have been telling the truth."
"Oh no, Gobby, you don't know Elliott if you think that. Don't you see, it was to make it seem natural? He knew I would blame myself, and he didn't want to hurt me. Oh, my poor, poor boy, what he must have suffered! I don't know whether this makes me feel most sad or most proud!"
"Well, then we wiped up the mess, and then I didn't like to leave him, so I got him to come to the Zoo with me. I was awfully glad I thought of it; it seemed to sort of take his mind off things. He was simply crazy about the blue-bottomed mandril. I was, too. Did you ever see it? I never saw such a combination of repulsiveness and beauty; it made my blood run cold. This huge baboon, with teeny little eyes, like a pig, and bright blue-and-red striped cheeks that look as if they'd been flayed, and the most horrible scarlet lips showing through a beard, like the world's worst nightmare of King Edward the Seventh, and then this exquisite behind—my dear, such colors!"
"Did Elliott?"
"Wait till I tell you—cerulean blue and deep rose and mauve, melting into each other. Elliott was crazy to paint him; in fact, he was just starting when I left New York."
"He is going on, then? Oh, the gallant gentleman!"
She pressed her hands together to stop their trembling. Her body trembled with love and pity because Elliott had been ready to kill himself when she had married some one else, with pride because he had the courage to live so that she should not be hurt. How he must have loved her! More, even, than she had guessed. She put her hand to her throat, suddenly breathless. "What a beauty!" Gobby exclaimed, noticing her sapphire bracelet.
She came back from the real world of intense feeling to the dream world of the sapphire bracelet, Gobby, the stack of franc-marked saucers. Already the lamps were printing shadow plane-leaves on the sidewalk. She must go back to Curtis.
"You've saved my life, my dear," she told Gobby as he left her at the Ritz. "And since you've done so much for me, will you do one thing more? Will you forget everything I've said, and just remember, Christabel is happy?"