Monsieur Jonquelle

by Melville Davisson Post

  He touched a bell. When the servant appeared the Prefect inquired if Sir James Macbain had arrived at the house. And being told that the baronet was below, directed that he be shown up immediately.

  When the head of the department of London police entered Monsieur Jonquelle rapidly explained the situation. The baronet started and snapped his big iron fingers, then he listened with the closest attention. He did not speak until the Prefect was quite done with his recital. Then he turned to the Count de Choiseul. He was a huge man with an abrupt, decided manner.

  “I do not believe this story,” he said; “I think it is wholly false. Nevertheless I will accept it as the true explanation of Lord Landeau’s death if the Count de Choiseul will commit it to writing over his signature. I may add that for the examining magistrate also to accept it the Count must include that he makes this statement at his own volition.”

  Writing materials were brought and the wounded man wrote out his explanation of the tragedy. His face had changed. It was like the face of one who from subterranean perils has gained the upper air. When his statement was signed and witnessed the baronet put the folded paper into his pocket and the Prefect took up his hat and stick.

  “Adieu, Monsieur le Comte,” he said. “I shall perhaps not see you again.”

  “I will look you up in Paris!” replied the Count de Choiseul with a pleasant smile.

  Monsieur Jonquelle paused a moment with his hand on the door.

  “I fear not,” he said. “It is the law of England, Monsieur may be interested to know, that if in an attempt to take his own life one by accident kills another, he is guilty of murder.”

  III.—The Alien Corn

  1

  I parted from Monsieur Jonquelle at Marseilles. I might have gone on with him to Algeria, but I was only an aide-de-camp attached to the staff of the commanding general in this affair. It was the Paris branch of our house that had the thing in hand. But I was idling in that city of pleasant sin and they sent me with him. It was an honorable discharge I got at Marseilles, not a desertion.

  “Run up to Nice,” the Prefect had said, “and amuse yourself, Monsieur. There is sun in Nice and the whole world to play with. Diable! If only one could be always young! … What is it that Chateaubriand says? ‘If man, physically made perfect, could unceasingly respond to a sentiment everlastingly renewed, he might very well live the life of the gods!’”

  And he made a delicate gesture with his extended fingers.

  “If there be a trim ankle in the whole of France you will find it now upon the Promenade des Anglais.”

  The head of the Department of Police in Paris is a gentleman. If you doubt it go into the Théâtre Vaudeville and see La Prise de Berg-op-Zoom.

  “The head of the Department of Police in London is a baronet; you will remember that from the recent attempt of an assassin to shoot him down in the street before his house.

  “You will therefore set aside, if you please, the type of persons observed to march at the head of parades in your strangely governed cities, and get, instead of that, a picture of a suave, gray man, who might be a minister of war in a book of memoirs.”

  He gave me a further word at parting.

  “You must live on the hills back of Nice,” he said; “the low quarters of the town are not healthy. Find a good hotel on the Boulevard des Cimiez.”

  “And how shall I find it?” I said.

  He laughed.

  “Why, Monsieur, there is nothing easier in this world. The tram ascends from the Avenue de la Gare to Cimiez. Enter it premier if you like; but look through into the second-class compartment. You will see some dozen ladies of noble birth there.” He paused a moment. “Observe where those ladies descend and follow them.”

  He laughed again; then he added:

  “Try the Imperial Palais; old Monsieur Boularde, from the Champs-Elysées, is proprietor. You will find chauffage central and a café to be decorated. Boularde’s method when he employs a chef is that of a master, Monsieur. He goes in and orders a dinner from the card; when he has tasted it he summons its creator. ‘Monsieur,’ he will say then, ‘you are a good chef—you are an excellent chef; but you are not the best to be had in France. I cannot employ you.’”

  Then his shrewd face became serious.

  “Remember, Monsieur, they are all children over there in Nice and this is the season of carnival. You will be bombarded with confetti, and driven by your coattails for a petit cheval, and hung with garlands.… Laugh, Monsieur! Never cease to laugh! Spend your money! Waste your time and forget this unpleasant business that we are on. I shall attend to that. There is a trap laid that they will eventually fall into—if not today, then to-morrow.” His face changed swiftly, like a mirror in moving lights. “But do you give it no further thought until I come upon you on some sunny morning. It will be all too soon—believe me—if you have got well into that enchanting frolic.”

  He reached up and laid his hand upon my shoulder.

  “But you will not be a fool, my friend.” And he looked at me with his keen gray eyes. “Eat the honey of your golden youth; but mind the bees, Monsieur! Kiss the petite masque that whispers ‘ ’Ello, dearie!’ into your Saxon ear; but do not let your heart out of the bag. And do not believe all the words that we speak in France. Mon Dieu! Have we not a way of saying fille de joie when we mean the pit?”

  And he turned back at the gangplank of his boat for a final word:

  “Keep out of the chill at sunset, mon cher ami, and the game at Monte Carlo.”

  If there is any sun in one’s blood it will come out in France: the people are so genial. I traveled up to Nice on the express. An old Frenchman got into my compartment. He was big and stooped, and he had a wilderness of beard; but he was a suave and pleasant person. He read La Patrie through his big, dim spectacles, with his nose against the page; but when we were on the way, and he had got the news of Paris, he put it down, addressed me with a little courteous apology for the monotony and asperities of travel—and we fell into a pleasant talk.

  He had a distressing weakness of the chest that ejected him out of Paris in the winter months, and he was on his way to Mentone. He had the history of the Côte-d’Azur upon his fingertips, and he passed from the first days of the world into the last with a charming ease of manner. He pointed out the Roman monuments and the English golf course at Cannes. He spoke of Caesar and Lord Brougham in the same sentence, and the island where Paganini lay for so long unburied, listening to the great orchestra of the Mediterranean and the winds.

  He envied me the holiday in Nice. To be an American, young, rich and traveling for his pleasure, was to have God’s blessings bound together in a bundle. Had I a hostelry in Nice arranged for? The city would be crowded, now that the rains were ended. I told him I would go to the Imperial Palais on the Boulevard des Cimiez. Ah, I was very rich, then! And he coughed to lay dear the great contrast in our fortunes. He seemed depressed after that; and when I got out at Nice I left him huddled over in a corner of the compartment, his big shoulders shaking and his fingers pressed to his mouth, as though he feared a hemorrhage. The thing saddened me—thus to pass by age and its inevitable weaknesses as one entered into the gate of pleasure!

  There had come on a little gust of rain and I went up through the city in a thin batter of white mud. I found the hostelry to be very nearly equal to its name. It is in a great semicircle above rising terraces set with orange trees—formal, as though painted upon the scenery of a theater. The interior is upon a plan strikingly unique. The building is in segments opening into the arc of a corridor; each of these segments has its separate stairway and its tiny elevator that ascends in the open hollow of the stair—a little gilded and paneled cage, operated by electric buttons.

  And here one has a curious experience of service. Every creature, from Monsieur Boularde descending, will run to fling open the doors to this dainty mite of a box, bow one in, close the doors, and send one on the way skyward. But one has to pilot this craft for himself
and, when he has alighted, close the doors and return it. It is all cleverly worked upon a little nest of buttons. Each of the segments in the structure is a section of exquisite apartments.

  The lower and larger ones were taken for the season; but I was shown two farther up, looking out over Nice, that were vacant—each with a balcony and some extravagances in mirrors that added a hundred francs. I chose the top one; and in the morning when I came out from my bath and flung open the long window, and the balmy air and the sun entered, I decided that the balcony was worth the hundred francs. One needed just that above this fairy city, with its clean, red roofs, its mountains of dull-green olive trees, its inimitable sky, and the motionless sea with its vast changing patches of color. There was no breath of wind; there was no wisp of cloud. I stood before it as before some illusion of the senses. How could Nature stage a thing like that? Yes, this balcony was clearly worth the money. At that minute the window below opened and some one stepped out. I looked down.

  A woman was standing there on the balcony. She wore a loose gown of delicate blue, and her hair hung to her waist in two wrist-thick plaits. I stared in a sort of wonder. The setting and my mood were agreeable to the entrance of some fairy creature. And here she was, as the painters were accustomed to present her in their pictures.

  The very words of the old story-tellers were accurately descriptive—hair as yellow as gold and as heavy as gold; and she was little and dainty, like the fairy women. I knew that her eyes were blue like the cornflower before she looked up. I must have made some sound, but she did not see me; and in a moment she went back through the window.

  I swallowed my breakfast—this is a practical world—and I made some inquiries of the servant who brought it up. The apartment was taken on this very morning. Madame Nekludoff and maid. A Russian then? “Oui, Monsieur.” A princess then, perhaps? He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands above my pot of coffee. How could one tell? If they said they were it was a sign against it! The coins were true and false! The latest princess of the blood was a dancer from Montmartre, with her hand in a banker’s pocket. And a nègre from New York had traveled as a rajah! The truth was by contraries, he thought—like dreams. Since this new guest gave no title, she doubtless had one.

  The old femme de chambre on the floor below was an expert in such matters, however. Monsieur understood? There were skilled dealers in jewels who, by the eye, could tell a spurious brilliant. It was long experience, maybe, or a sort of instinct—one could not say. Well, the ancient Eda was such a judge of the human jewel. Should he enlist her service for Monsieur? I declined, and we closed the incident with a coin of the republic.

  I went down and smoked innumerable cigarettes upon the great terrace among the formal orange trees. Strolling singers came and sang, and children danced; but somehow my interest in events was not with them. I had an eye upon that balcony, but no god moved. I went in to luncheon, and after that to the vantage of my window. It was in vain.

  Then, when I had given up and abandoned myself to fortune, as Caesar used to do, the thing happened.

  I was going down in that absurd gilt box of a lift, when, as I approached the floor below, a little voice called out: “Ascenseur!” I had trouble to select the proper button, but finally I got it, and after some endeavors brought the craft to dock, and got the doors open. I saw Madame Nekludoff for an instant before she recognized that I was not a servant.

  She was not the mere child that she looked in her fairy costume, but she was young—one or two and twenty, I should say. Her face in repose was saddened, as though she had tasted life and found it bitter. She was all in black, but there were no extravagances of mourning in her dress. She had chosen that color, I thought, that she might be the less conspicuous; but it was a failure to that end. The somber background served only the more to bring out the lights in her hair and the fair, transparent skin.

  She was in a panic of confusion when she saw that I was not a servant.

  “Oh, pardon, Monsieur!” she said. “I thought it would be le garçon. I am sorry! Pardon!” And she turned to go back to her apartment.

  I made the best continental bow I could.

  “Madame will do me a very great honor,” I said, “if she will permit me to take her down. I cannot pretend to a very considerable skill as an aërial pilot, but I think I can manage.” I went on, for I feared she would go away forever if I ceased to talk—and the fear was very truly founded: “There ought, of course, to be a genie with this magic box; but he is sleeping or on a journey, and in his absence may I not offer a neighbor’s service?”

  She declined, however, expressed her regret at having caused me this annoyance, and in some confusion returned to her apartment.

  I went down in no very genial mood. Here was the golden door in the wall gone shut before I could get my foot in. I held myself now somewhat lighter in esteem. I must have bungled pretty badly. It would be my doddering, idiotic pleasantries! Whence is it that a man, ordinarily sane, has a seizure of these driveling witticisms upon the moment that the gods give him?

  This woman was accustomed to a formal courtesy. And here was a big, simpering barbarian who would be genial, and would seize upon the advantage of an error to strike up a galloping acquaintance. It was no vain institution—these continental manners; and we have them not. And therefore we must be misunderstood, our best motives wrongly interpreted, and ourselves catalogued in a class of bourgeois.

  I went down to the Promenade des Anglais and sat there on a bench in the sun. The world went by on that great stone way paving the arc of the sea. Workmen in blue blouses were setting up standards along the streets, and cunning electrical devices, and building seats in tiers. Crowds of people moved like swarms of butterflies. An old, huge Italian came upon me with a basket of wire masks. He knew a little English and was proud to display it with his wares.

  The meester would go into the carnival this night, perhaps, with friends, in a carriage? They would have a bag of—I never could get the word—but I found out later that he meant the little clay balls that are thrown like handfuls of shot, in place of confetti, and must be kept off with a mask. And he displayed his wares—pink; blue; every color. The meester would need several perhaps? He would not be alone in his carriage!

  I told him with some asperity of language that I had no carriage for this night—nor any friend; and that he would oblige me by going to the devil! But he was a rogue of perennial good humor. He leered at me across his basket. The meester would not go to bed this night because his spirits were cast down! This was the gala night. Nice would be wonderland this night! The gnomes, the elfin people, and all the grotesque creatures of the fairy world would possess the city! Men traveled from the ends of the earth for this night only. And would the meester go to sleep, then, like a lout before the fire? Let him secure a mask for two francs and forget the tables if chance were the offender—or his mistress if she had cut him. There would be fortune another day, and Nice on this night would be full of women; in fact, there was no supply of anything in France so plentiful.

  I got up from the bench and left him; but he followed me to say that he would keep his eye upon me and that I should purchase from him, not one mask, but two, or he was no honest tradesman from Bordighera and the son of a poet!

  I went into a shop on the Rue de Félix Fauvre and got an English book. But I could not have read the Memoirs of the Abbess of Odo. I presently gave it into the hand of a young woman who sold me a ravissant cigar, manufactured in Algeria—quite true, as I discovered, and from the frayed cables in the harbor there! I went then to the Crédit Lyonnais and tried to deposit a draft; but to all my tenders I received the same polite assurance in my native tongue: “Et es not sufficient.” I did not care, for I had money in my pocket; but the universe was out of joint. I took a fiacre to my hotel and sat once more on the terrace among the orange trees.

  Evening was descending, the air was motionless, and the colors of the world were stolen out of Paradise. And yet, with it
all, I sat before it some distance down in the Inferno because a certain balcony was empty. The thing was incomparably absurd—to be thus dispossessed by a fancy! But then it is the fancies in this life that have power to dispossess us! If one goes upon an adventure in enchanted countries, shall he be unmindful of the damsel he meets there? It is not so written in the tales of Bagdad!

  I was interrupted by a great buzzing. A gigantic bird circled over Nice; and far away, in the direction of Cannes, a speck was approaching; and behind it another, and still another, traveled in the dead air above the motionless sea like a projectile, until it, too, became a monster bird with black wings and a yellow body. I might have looked for these creatures in this enchanted country. Should one meet here every other wonder of Arabia and not find the roc! The whole aërial fleet of France, encamped in the flat meadows toward Cannes, was in maneuver.

  In a moment the windows were full of people. I looked for Madame Nekludoff; but, instead, there came out on the balcony a squat, middle-aged woman with the aspect of a peasant. She seemed to speak to some one inside, for I could see her lips move; and she looked down once at me; then she opened the windows as wide as she could get them, in order, I thought, that some one inside could see without coming out. It occurred to me then that my surveillance was observed by madame and that it annoyed her.

  I got up and went inside, took a cold plunge, got my dinner and determined to go out and see all the carnival, like any sensible person. Monsieur Boularde said it would be time enough when I heard the cannon; but he was mistaken in that sign. There was a red glow over the city when I went out. The procession was beginning to enter the Avenue de la Gare.