The Transgression of Andrew Vane/Chapter III

The saddling-bell was whirring for the third race as Andrew and Radwalader slipped in at the main entrance of Auteuil, and made their way rapidly through the throng behind the tribunes, in the direction of the betting-booths beyond.
 * Chapter III. The Girl in Red.

“We’ll just have time to place our bets,” said Radwalader, as he scanned the bulletins. “Numbers two, five, six, and eleven are out. Scratch them off your programme and we’ll take our pick of the rest.”

“You’ll have to advise me,” answered Andrew. “One couldn’t very well be more ignorant of the horses than I am.”

“I never give advice,” said Radwalader, with an air of seriousness. “I used to, long ago. I went about vaccinating my friends, as it were, with counsel, but none of it ever took, or was taken — whichever way you choose to put it — so I gave it up. Besides, a French race-horse is like the girl one elects to marry. The choice is purely a matter of luck, and there’s no depending upon the record of previous performances. I’ve always thought that if I had to choose a wife, I’d prefer to do it in the course of a game of blind-man’s buff. The one I caught I’d keep. Then the choice would at least be unprejudiced. Shut your eyes, my dear Vane, and stick your pencil-point through your programme. Then open them and bet on the horse nearest the puncture.” And he went through this little performance himself with the utmost solemnity. “It’s Vivandière,” he added. “I shall stake a louis on Vivandière.”

“And I, for originality’s sake, shall choose Mathias, with my eyes open,” said Andrew, laughing, as they took their places in line before the booth.

“Well, you couldn’t do better,” observed his companion. “He’s a willing little beast, and not unlikely to romp home in the lead. I’d bet on him myself, except that I’m so damnably unlucky that it really wouldn’t be fair to you, Vane. I never back a horse but what he falls. I had ten louis up, last Sunday, on a steeplechase, and the water-jump was so full of the horses I’d chosen that, upon my soul, you couldn’t see the water! It was for all the world like the sunken road at Waterloo after the charge of the cuirassiers.”

When they had purchased their tickets, Radwalader led the way to the front of the tribunes, and, mounting upon the bench along the rail, turned his back upon the course, and began to survey the throng in the tiers of seats above.

“This is my favourite way of introducing a newcomer to Paris,” he said presently. “She never appears to better advantage than when she is togged out in her Sunday-go-to-race-meeting-best.”

With his stick he began to point out people here and there, until, from a narrow gateway to their right, the horses filed out upon the track, and they turned, resting their elbows on the railing, to watch them go by.

“That’s Vivandière,” said Radwalader. “Poor animal! She runs the best possible chance of breaking her neck. If the jockey so much as suspected that I’d her number in my pocket, he’d probably have taken out a policy on his life. There’s Mathias — the little chestnut. He looks in rattling good form. I suspect you haven’t thrown away that louis.”

“It wouldn’t be a very ruinous loss, in any event,” said Andrew.

Radwalader was choosing a cigarette from his case.

“I wonder,” he answered, rolling it between his fingers, “if you’d mind my asking you if you mean that? To some people it would be a consideration; to others, none whatever. It isn’t conventional, or even good form, to pry into a man’s finances, but we shall probably be going about together, more or less, during your stay, and in such a case I always like to know how a man stands in regard to expenses. I don’t want to embarrass you by proposing things you don’t feel you can afford, still less to be a clog upon you when you wish to go beyond my means.”

He looked up, smiling frankly.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he added. “It’s not in the least an idle curiosity. I’m an old friend of Mrs. Carnby’s, and it would be a great pleasure to do anything to make your visit a success. But, if you’ll trust me, I’d be glad to know how you propose to live. You don’t think me impertinent?”

“Not in the least,” said Andrew. “I understand perfectly. It’s a very sensible point of view. And I’ll say candidly that my grandfather, Mr. Sterling, has been very generous; so that, unless I’m totally reckless, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have the best of everything.” He paused for a moment, and then added: “My letter of credit is for thirty thousand francs.”

“Thank you,” said Radwalader. “It makes things easier. I’d forgotten for the moment your relationship to Mr. Sterling, or I shouldn’t have needed to take the liberty of speaking as I did. I met him once in Boston, I think. Isn’t he called the ‘Copper Czar’?”

“I believe he is,” replied Andrew. But there’s not much in nicknames, you know.”

“No, of course not,” agreed his companion. “There goes the bell. For once, it’s a fair start.”

Far away, beyond the thickly-peopled stretch of the pelouse, a group of gaily-coloured dots went rocking rapidly to the left, vanished for an instant at the turn, and then flashed into view again in the form of jockeys standing stiffly in their stirrups, as the horses swept down the transverse stretch. People were shouting all about them, and in Andrew’s unaccustomed ears the blood surged and hammered madly. He was at the age when there is nothing more inspiring than such a play of life and action, under the open sky and over the close-cropped turf. The ripple of lithe muscles along the sleek flanks of the horses; the set, smooth-shaven faces of the rigid jockeys; the gleam of sunlight and colour; and the deep, crescendo voice of the multitude, swelling to thunder as the racers flew past — all these set his pulses tingling, until he, too, cried out impulsively in his excitement. It was his first horse-race, and his first glimpse of Paris into the bargain. There is more than enough in the combination to set young blood aglow.

''“Houp! Houp! Houp!”'' With sharp, staccato cries of encouragement, the jockeys were raising their mounts at the water-jump, over which they sailed gallantly, one after another, like great brown birds, until the very last. There was a lisp of grazed twigs, a long “A-ah!” from pelouse and pesage alike, a dull splash which sent the spray flying high in silver beads and then a jockey in a crimson blouse rolled heavily forward on the turf, arose, stamped his foot, and swore profusely in picturesque cockney at his mare, who had regained her feet and, with dangling rein and saddle all askew, stood looking back at him, as if uncertain whether to stop and inquire after his injuries or go on alone. Abruptly deciding upon the latter as the wiser course, she set off at a leisurely gallop, to the accompaniment of shrill, sarcastic comments from the crowd, and an additional exposition of the jockey’s astonishing wealth of vocabulary.

“Voilà!” sighed Radwalader. “That was Vivandière! What did I tell you? It’s absolutely inhuman of me to bet on a horse. And look at Mathias! He’s twenty metres ahead of the rest, and going better every minute. You’ve hit it this time, Vane. There’s one comfort. You’ll win back my louis, at all events. It’s something to know that the money’s not going out of the family.

The crowd was already shouting ''“Mathias! C’est Mathias qui gagne!”'' as Andrew bent forward to see the horses wheel again into the transverse cut. Mathias was far in the lead, and seemed to gain yet more at the hurdle. The race was practically over, a thousand yards from the finish, and, as Mathias flashed past the post, a winner by twenty lengths, and Vivandière came ambling complacently in, at the end of the procession, with the stirrups bouncing grotesquely up and down, Radwalader replaced his field-glass with a deep sigh of resignation, and the two men went back toward the bulletins to see the posting of the payments.

It appeared, when the figures snapped into place, that Mathias returned one hundred and ten francs, which meant a clear gain of ten louis. Andrew had “hit it” in good earnest.

“I think I shall adopt horse-racing as my profession,” he laughed, as they cashed the ticket at the caisse. “Let’s see: forty dollars a race, six races a day, seven days to the week — two-forty — twenty-eight — fourteen — sixteen — sixteen hundred and eighty dollars a week. By Jove! That’s not bad, by way of a start!”

“The start’s the easiest part of it,” observed Radwalader. “Even Vivandière can manage that. It’s the finish that counts, and the finish of horse-racing is commonly the penitentiary. It’s the only profession where the hard labor comes at the end instead of at the beginning.”

“I think I’ll hang on to what I’ve won, then,” answered Andrew. “If you’ve nothing better to do, perhaps you’ll help me to spend part of it on a dinner to-night. You know all the best places. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to walk about a bit, and see the people.”

“I accept both proposals with pleasure,” said his companion. “We might dine at the Tour d’Argent, if you like. I haven’t had one of Frédéric’s ducks in a little eternity.”

Back of the tribunes the crowd was greater now than it had been at the time of their arrival. There was the usual gay commingling of elaborate spring toilettes, brilliant parasols, white waistcoats, gloves, and gaiters, and red and blue uniforms; and, all about them, a babble of brilliant nothings. It was, as Radwalader had said, Paris at her best. He resumed his comments, which had been interrupted by the race, punctuating each sentence with a nod, or a few words, in French or English, to passing acquaintances, and flicking the gravel with the point of his stick.

“I envy you your first impressions, my dear Vane. It’s an old story with me, all this, but I remember quite distinctly my first day on a French race-course. It seemed to me the most wonderful spot on earth. I’d always lived in Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to Paris is something in the nature of a resurrection. For the first time in my life, I saw people in possession of something to live for, instead of merely something to live on. There wasn’t so much as a wrinkle of anxiety in sight. Then and there, I adopted Paris as my permanent abode. You know this town is a kind of metaphorical fly-paper. When once one has settled, one stops buzzing and banging one’s head against the window-screens of circumstance.”

“And flops over, and dies?” asked Andrew. “It seems to me that’s the unpleasant part about fly-paper.”

“I’m not sure of that,” said Radwalader. “I’d have to have the fly’s word for it. All of us must die in one manner or another, and perhaps being suffocated by a surfeit of sugar and molasses is not the most disagreeable way. However, you are only going to browse along the edges.”

“There are some stunning women here,” said Andrew.

“That’s singularly à propos,” replied Radwalader. “Are there any in particular whom you’d like to meet? I know about all of them.”

“Oh, do you?” said Andrew. “I hadn’t noticed you bow.”

For a fraction of a second Radwalader glanced at his companion’s face. Then —

“Hadn’t you?” he said, with a short laugh. “I’m afraid your eyes have been too busy with the women themselves to take note of my salutations.”

The next moment he doffed his hat ceremoniously to a little black-eyed creature with a superb triple string of pearls hanging almost to the waist of her black lace gown.

“That’s Suzanne Derval,” he explained, as they passed. “She’s one of the brightest women in Paris.”

“And alone?” said Andrew.

“Her escort,” answered Radwalader, with an almost imperceptible pause between the words, “is probably placing his bet. As I said before, if there’s any one you want to meet—”

“Well, there is,” replied Andrew, colouring a little. “We passed a girl in red back there a bit. It’s possible you know her. I’m afraid you think me a good deal of a boy.”

“I’m afraid you think a good deal of a girl,” laughed Radwalader. “No, my dear chap. Or, rather, if your desire is an evidence of extreme youth, then the majority of men are fit subjects for a crèche. Come along, and we’ll try to track your scarlet siren.”

“We’ll not have much difficulty,” said Andrew, as they turned. “There she is now. Do you see? By the tree — in red.”

“Oh,” answered Radwalader, “oh, yes. That’s Mirabelle Tremonceau. Your ‘red’ is cerise, as a matter of fact, but that’s as near as the average man comes to the colour of a woman’s gown.”

“I can’t imagine one spending much time in learning such things.”

“Anywhere but in Paris, perhaps not. Here the knowledge is vital. It’s part of one’s education — like being able to distinguish a Louis Quatorze chair from a Louis Quinze, or a Fragonard from a Boucher ten feet away. If you want to meet Mademoiselle Tremonceau, I’ll be very glad to present you.”

“I might wait here while you ask her,” suggested Andrew.

“Eh?” said Radwalader. “Oh, yes— by all means.”

The girl was talking with an officer of chasseurs, on the turf, a short distance away. She was tall and slender, very pale, with magnificent violet eyes and golden-bronze hair. From the gauze aigrettes on her hat to the tips of her patent-leather shoes, her costume was absolutely flawless. Her gown, of cherry-coloured crepe de Chine, pailleté with silver, breathed from its every fold the talismanic word “Paquin,” and the Lalique ornament of emeralds and ruddy gold which swung at her throat by a slender chain said as plainly “Charlier.” There was not a dot missing from her veil, not the suggestion of a wrinkle in her white gloves, and not a displeasing note in the harmony of the whole.

“There’s nothing wrong about the boy’s judgment,” was Radwalader’s mental comment. “He’s picked out the prettiest and best gowned woman in Paris. And it couldn’t be better,” he added, with an odd little smile.

Mademoiselle Tremonceau greeted him with a nod, a gloved hand, and a “Comment vas-tu?”

“B’en, pas mal, merci,” answered Radwalader. With his left hand he caressed his chin reflectively, and, as if this had been a signal — which indeed it was — the girl turned to the young chasseur, who was staring at the intruder out of round, resentful eyes, and dismissed him with a hint.

“You’ve had fifteen minutes of my time, mon cher.”

Then, as he retired, discomfited, she faced Radwalader again, and seemed to search his face for the answer to some unspoken question.

“I want to present one of my friends,” he said, as if replying. “Mr. Andrew Vane — an American who has been in Paris three days. We’ll have to speak English. Have I your permission?”

“You’re strangely ceremonious of a sudden,” answered Mademoiselle Tremonceau. “I don’t seem to remember your asking permission before.”

“It was his suggestion,” observed Radwalader laconically.

For a moment the girl made no reply. Her questioning look had observably become more keen, and with one finger she picked at the turquoise matrix in the handle of her parasol.

“Well?” she said finally.

“Galetteux,” said Radwalader. “Go softly, my friend.”

Mademoiselle Tremonceau bowed with ineffable dignity.

“You have my gracious permission to present him,” she said.

Whistling softly, as was his habit when pleased, the air of “Au Clair de la Lune,” Radwalader observed their meeting from the corners of his eyes, and was struck, as Mrs. Carnby had been, by Andrew’s perfect repose. They spoke in English, of trivialities — Paris, the weather, the crowd, and the victory of Mathias — and, as the saddling-bell rang for the fifth race, all walked out together to the trackside. Here Radwalader left them, to place his bet, and Andrew found two little wooden chairs on which they seated themselves to await his return.

“You and Mr. Radwalader are old friends?” asked the girl.

“On the contrary,” said Andrew, “we met for the first time only this morning.”

“Oh! And what do you think of him?”

“I find him very agreeable,” said Andrew; “a little cynical, perhaps, but clever — and cleverness, to twist an English saying, covers a multitude of sins.”

“Yes, he’s clever,” answered Mademoiselle Tremonceau. “There are the horses. Are you coming to tea?” she added, after a silence, as Radwalader rejoined them.

Radwalader turned to Andrew.

“The poet says that opportunity has no back hair,” he observed. “I think we might grasp at this forelock, don’t you?”

“Since Mademoiselle Tremonceau is so kind, I should say, by all means.”

They watched the race in silence, and then

“I can find room for you both in the victoria,” suggested the girl.

“Better yet!” said Radwalader with alacrity, “provided Vane takes the strapontin. The only place where I feel my age is in my knees. Since you’ve never occupied Mademoiselle Tremonceau’s strapontin, my dear Vane, you can have no idea of the physical discomfort attendant upon being a little lower than an angel. Think of my having won — even a placé! Shall we go now? I abhor the crush at the end. Give me a minute to cash my ticket, and then we’ll look up the carriage.”

“Do you speak French?” said Mademoiselle Tremonceau to Andrew, as Radwalader strolled off in the direction of the caisse.

“I seem to be able to say what I want when the occasion arises,” he answered, “but I much prefer English. I am trying to adjust myself to new conditions, and I need all my energy for the task, without undertaking a strange language at the same time. You can have no idea how one’s first visit to Paris sends preconceived notions tumbling about one’s ears. So far, the Eiffel Tower is the only thing which looked as I expected it would. There’s a surprise at every turn.”

“For example?”

“Well, for example, French women. Even so far as my own town of Boston we know you’re beautiful, and beautifully gowned, although nothing short of personal experience can teach one to what an extent. But I’ve always been brought up to believe that you were so hemmed in by conventionality, so strictly watched, that a chap wasn’t allowed so much as to say ‘Good-morning’ to one of you, so long as you were unmarried, at least, except under the eyes of mothers and fathers and guardians. But it seems that it’s not so at all.”

As he spoke. Mademoiselle Tremonceau’s lips parted in a little smile, and as he paused, she slipped in an apparently irrelevant question.

“Are you married, Mr. Vane?”

“Good gracious, no!” said Andrew. “I suppose I may as well confess that I’m only twenty.”

Mademoiselle Tremonceau looked off across the track to where, in the interval preceding the next race, the restless thousands circled to and fro about the betting-booths of the pelouse, in the manner of a multitude of ants preparing to carry off a bulky bit of carrion. Then she drew her veil tight, with a charmingly feminine little moue which shortened her upper lip, tilted her chin, and set her eyelids fluttering.

“Twenty?” she echoed. “My age precisely. ''Tiens! C’est plutô drôlatique ça!'' Here’s Mr. Radwalader, at last. Did you get your payment? Only twenty-two fifty? Well, that is your other louis back, at all events. Don’t you want to run along after the carriage, as long as you know how? Mr. Vane will attend to me, I’m sure, and we’ll meet you at the right of the main entrance. Here’s the carriage number. Simon is the brigadier in charge to-day. Tell him it’s for me, and you won’t have to wait.”

Radwalader undertook this commission with cheerfulness, although the place at which he started toward the gate was distinctly incompatible with even the most liberal conception of “running along.” Evidently he was not unique in his abhorrence of the crush at the end. Many were already making their way from the pesage, and the crowd behind the tribunes was densest about the sorties. Andrew and Mademoiselle Tremonceau followed him, five minutes later.

“I wonder if you mind my taking your arm?” asked the girl. “I’m always a little nervous, going out.”

“With pleasure,” said Andrew, adding, as her glove touched his sleeve, “I was going to suggest it, but I don’t know French etiquette as yet, and I was afraid I might be presuming.”

He was unconscious that, as they passed through the throng, many heads were turned, among them that of the young officer of chasseurs, who drew the end of his mustache between his lips, and gnawed it savagely. A perfectly appointed victoria, drawn up at the edge of the driveway, was awaiting them, with Radwalader standing at the step.

It was close upon seven o’clock when the two men emerged from Mademoiselle Tremonceau’s apartments on the Avenue Henri Martin, and, hailing a passing cab, set off for the Tour d’Argent. Radwalader evinced no desire to talk, as they bowled across to and then down the Champs Elysées, and Andrew was conscious of being grateful for the silence. He wanted to think. He did not wholly understand the hour and a half which had just gone by. There had been no sign of Mademoiselle Tremonceau’s family. Tea was served in a salon crowded with elaborate furniture, and softly illumined by rose-shaded electric globes on bronze appliques. Liveried servants came and went noiselessly, through tapestry curtains, and over an inlaid floor, polished to mirror-like brilliance, and strewn with mounted skins. The double marqueterie tea-table gleamed with a silver samovar and candlesticks. Baccarat glass, and thin, cream-coloured cups and saucers, with a crest in raised gold. Here and there, huge Gloire de Dijon roses leaned sleepily from silver vases, and, on a little stand, a great bunch of wild violets breathed summer from a blue Sèvres bowl. An indefinable atmosphere of luxury and languor pervaded the room. From the girl herself came a faint hint of some strangely sweet, but wholly unfamiliar, fragrance, which Andrew had not noted in the open air. He watched her, fascinated, as her slender white hands, with their blazing jewels, went to and fro among the cups and saucers. Her every movement was deliciously and suggestively feminine, as had been her tightening of her veil, an hour before, and exquisitely languid and deliberate, as if the day had been a thousand hours long instead of twenty-four. She said but little, Radwalader maintaining a running thread of his half-banter, half-philosophy, with its ingenious double-meanings and contortions of the commonplace, whereby, in some fashion of his own, he contrived to simulate and stimulate conviction.

Andrew had found, presently, that he was growing sleepy. The abrupt change from the cool air of outer afternoon to the perfume-laden atmosphere of Mademoiselle Tremonceau’s salon, the drone of Radwalader’s voice, the soft light, in contrast to the sunshine they had left — all contributed to his drowsiness. Once, for nearly a minute, the whole room melted, as it were, into one golden-gray mist, through which silver and glass and fabrics glowed only as harmonious notes of colour, and wherein the face of his hostess seemed to float like a reflection in troubled water. Then, as suddenly, every detail of his surroundings appeared to bulge at him out of the haze, and stood fixed and clear. For an instant he thought that Radwalader had raised his voice. He seemed to be speaking very loudly; but, when the first nervous start had passed, Andrew realized that this was his own imagining, and that neither of his companions had noticed his momentary somnolence.

At the end, he had held Mademoiselle Tremonceau’s hand for a second beyond the limit of convention. She made no motion to withdraw it, but looked him frankly in the eyes.

“We’ve been neglecting you, haven’t we?” she said. “Mr. Radwalader and I are such old friends, that we’re inclined to selfishness, and apt to forget that our talk is not as interesting to others as to ourselves. Perhaps you’ll come in to tea on Tuesday, about five, and I’ll try to prove myself a more considerate hostess.”

“Thank you,” said Andrew. “I shall be very pleased — though I suspect you are undertaking the impossible.”

The fiacre was passing the Rond Point when Radwalader spoke.

“This is the hour when Paris seems to me supremely to deserve her title of siren,” he said. “In spring and summer, at least, I always try to pass it out of doors. There is a fascination for me, that never grows stale, in the coming of twilight, when the street-lamps begin to wink, and the cafés are lighting up. Did you ever feel softer air or see a more tenderly saffron sky? And this constant murmur of passing carriages, this hum of voices, broken, more often than anywhere else on earth, by laughter — isn’t it life, as one never understands the word elsewhere? Isn’t it full of suggestion and appeal? I’ve never been able to analyze the charm of the Champs Elysées at sunset, more nearly than to say that it seems to blot out one’s remembrance of everything in the world that is sordid and commonplace, and to bring boldly to the fore the significance of all that is sweet and gay. Can you imagine considering the price of stocks or the drift of politics just now? I can’t. I think of flowers, and Burgundy in slender-stemmed glasses, and tziganes playing waltz music, and women with good teeth, laughing. I smell roses and trèfle. I see mirrors, and candlesticks with openwork shades, silver over red, and sleek waiters bending down with bottles swathed in napkins. I hear violins and the swish of silk skirts. I taste caviar — and I feel — that I have underestimated Providence, after all!”

“There is no Paris but Paris, and Radwalader is her prophet!” laughed Andrew.

“That suggests a religion,” said the other, “and I suppose, all said and done, that Paris is my religion. How did you like Mirabelle Tremonceau?”

“Even more than I expected.”

“That’s well — and very unusual. One almost always expects too much of a beautiful woman. Beauty has this in common with an inherited fortune — that it’s apt to paralyze individual effort. Looking into mirrors and cutting coupons don’t leave one much time for anything else. But she’s exceptional. You’re right in liking her, and what’s more, you’ll probably like her better and better as time goes on.”

“She asked me if I was married,” said Andrew.

“Did she?” answered Radwalader. “Well — are you?”

“No, assuredly not.”

“Engaged, perhaps.”

Instead of replying, Andrew glanced curiously at his companion, his lips set in a thin, straight hue. Radwalader met his glance fairly.

“I beg your pardon, Vane,” he said immediately. “That was unwarranted impertinence, which you’re quite justified in resenting. I’m too prone to trifling, and the remark slipped out thoughtlessly. Pray consider it unsaid.”

“With the best will in the world,” said Andrew heartily. “There is nothing more admirable, I always think, than a frank apology.”

In the words there was a faint, curiously suggestive echo of the tone in which Radwalader was wont to voice his glittering generalities.