Fief

“ But the fashionable convention, I supposed, when once acquired was ineradicable; and, no doubt, to have dined in undress would have seemed tantamount with Fifine to bathing in public.
But, to my surprise, she took my sarcasm, if sarcasm it was, in good part.
“This apparition is of your own invoking,” she said. “And I did not want to deny you that pride in yourself which you had a right to feel. The strange comrade who has come to you out of the shadows is, after all, only your own lay-figure, Cousin; and—and the dress is very pretty.” ”

“ I took her hand, and she came at once, and stood with me before the picture.
She did not speak for a long time; but at length she turned to me, and I was content in the guerdon of her look.
“Felix,” she said softly, “women are really of coarser fibre than men. You see us not as we are, but as your transcendent imaginations paint us. And we know that well enough; and that is why we will always submit to the judgment of men, rather than to that of our own sex, who know the truth.”
“You are pleased, Fifine?” ”

“ Could orthodoxy have shewn a better case for love? But let the matter rest there. If stones are to be cast, here am I, blithe to be made their target. I am jealous for her good fame; not a copper farthing for my own.
But, while I insist on that specific truth, I make generally no pretence of drawing the portrait of any Fifine but the one commonly known to me. ”

“ Then the child’s cry changed to impatience, to terror and at last to despair. It was Fifi. The mother was dead, but the child did not know it then. She had no one in the world that I could discover; so, when I was started for France in a cart—for I could not walk at all then—I brought Fifi with me. She was so light, her weight made no difference, and ate so little that she could live off my rations and there would still be enough left for me. When we got to Paris, I hired a little garret for her, in yonder tall old house where I live, and Fifi lives there still. ”

“ She shook her head forlornly.
“I am very sorry,” she said.
“You want your Ronsin back?”
“Or something in its place. I know you can if you will, Felix. It is only perversity that prevents you. Do, to please me, paint something I can understand.”
“But that I cannot? Well, shall I paint you, Fifine?” ”

“ As she stood up, the picture she made—her face, half in glow half in shadow, the vivid life of her contrasting with the golden ruins of the walls—wrought with such ardour upon my imagination, that I felt that, if I failed in that moment to take advantage of the creative impulse its beauty awoke in me, I deserved to be writ down for ever more the emasculate cypher of her strictures. So very quietly I got out the block, pencils, and a handful of coloured crayons which I made it my constant practice to carry about with me.
“Fifine,” I said, “don’t move: stand just as you are. ”

“ Fifine was Fifine to me, and that was all sufficient. If I thought lazily beyond that bare fact, tasting even a piquancy in speculation, it was to present myself with the portrait of a young lady of very feminine but independent views, having a knowledge, or at least a cognizance of the Bohemian side of Paris, entertaining seedy violoncellists, and capable of coming to definite conclusions with herself on a variety of subjects, from art and dress to conduct. Comely too, and yet unspoilt, be it said; and, if a worldling, one with the highest capacity for self-sacrifice to an ideal devotion. ”

“ For myself I am a little tired of the eternal cult. He is as great a nuisance in his place as the Dairyman’s daughter is in hers, or as Kingsley at Westward Ho, where the very engines carry his name about. Mistral did not create Provence, any more than Stevenson created childhood, as some of his fatuous adorers would have us believe. But, come.”
“All that is Greek to me,” said Fifine, as we sought the front of the statue. “But if it means England——”
“It does.”
“Do you ever wish for your own country again, Felix? You have been a great traveller, have you not?” ”

“ In the train, while Fifine pretended to sleep, I sat chewing the cud of injurious reflection. “She is comparing her day,” I thought, “with what it might have been had that fulsome yarn-slinging impostor accompanied us. I think, on the whole, and under the circumstances, she might have endured me more benignly. But I suppose it is impossible to woman to yield a point graciously, and without at least some negative nagging in the shape of a self-sacrificial, smiling-martyrdom pose.” ”

“ A poplar or two hung above the river for foreground; there was hardly a ripple there to shake the pictured rushes; it was as lovely an impression of antique peace as I have ever encountered. Fifine, after we had passed it all, made a little gesture to me, and I came and sat by her side, when she stole her hand into mine. I thought I knew what was in her heart—something emotional, a little piteous, the sense of a loveliness spent and of doubts to come. I pressed the soft palm in reassurance.
And so at last—Paris. The benediction of the season remained with us to the end. ”

“ For Fifine was tidy: have I never remarked upon it? Our difference in that respect was her perpetual lament. She could never be at ease in the presence of casual litter; a piece of paper flung in a grate, a picture hung crooked on a wall, would spoil the whole æsthetic value of a room to her; she folded her clothes at night; her toilette accessories had each its definite place on her dressing table, and any natural disorder was no sooner done with than she must be removing its evidences. Tidying-up was an obsession with her; I used to laugh at her about it, but it was no good. ”

“ The man who could “pinch” his own soul of buds, like a prize chrysanthemum, in order to develop one monstrous head, was always a fool to me. I prefer, improving upon Ancient Pistol, to make the world not only mine oyster, but my pepper, my Chablis, my feast of a hundred dishes from hors-d’œuvre to savoury; and so, if you like, the last decanter being drained, to sleep under the table. Most properly, Death is the only drunkard who never wakes with a headache.
Well, Fifine interested me; but Fifine was not my universe. ”

“ All immense, all significant, all spectral despite its ponderous actuality; teeming with the infinite dust and debris of bygone story; ruins like rocks and rocks like ruins, one indistinguishable confusion and torrent of stone. Long ago from the floor of the little church they had unearthed the body of some beautiful unknown châtelaine. She had golden hair, like the maid of Pornic, that stretched down on either side to her feet. It was all that survived from the desecration, and it was deposited in Mistral’s museum at Arles. Fifine had seen it there; and, of course, Carabas. ”

“ But Fifine struck in immediately, in a very cold voice:—
“We have presumed too much already on M. Cabarus’s good-nature. Please leave him, Felix, to make his own arrangements.”
“They are made, Mademoiselle,” said Carabas gallantly, and with a most charming and ingratiatory smile. “Can Mademoiselle doubt it?”
“I am at a loss for your meaning, Monsieur,” said Fifine. “I have no claim upon your confidence, nor any desire to share my own with a stranger—” and she turned icily away from him.
I never saw a man more taken aback. ”

“ I enjoyed myself, I confess it; there was something exhilarating in this contact with the fresh clean North in a fervid land, and Clarice, as a fair young Englishwoman, did her country and me, I felt, the most gratifying credit. We went back to lunch at the Hôtel, to recruit against fresh exertions, and started off again without having seen anything of Fifine. That did not disturb me, but rather otherwise; I had had quite enough of her for the time being, and her presence in the room would have been nothing but an embarrassment. ”

“ Anyhow we had some difficulty in securing places at a table in a dark corner; but, once established, we prepared, after our custom, to enjoy ourselves thoroughly. And, lo! the first item on the menu was bouille-abaisse.
I crowed. “Tiens! The goal of our long romantic quest lies revealed to us at last. We are about to achieve our ideal; the spirit of abstract beauty offers to materialise before us. Eat of this ambrosia, my gossip, and count for its sake the toil well vindicated.”
Fifine laughed, rosily, but in her little sedate way. ”

“ About three o’clock in the afternoon, the van, containing Fifi and her wardrobe, drew up before the tall old house in the street of the Black Cat where she had lived ever since she was a little, black-eyed child, who still cried for her mother, and who would not be comforted except upon Cartouche’s knee. How familiar, how actual, how delightfully redolent of home was the narrow little street! Fifi saw it in her mind’s eye long before she reached it, and in her gladness of heart sang snatches of songs like the one Toto thought was made for him, Le petit mousse noir. ”

“ It was a charming hat. You might have worn it yourself.”
She looked puzzled.
“Well,” she said. “But it was funny, wasn’t it, his appearing just at that moment. ‘Talk of the wolf, and you’ll see the tip of his tail.’”
“I did,” said I, “and it wagged. But, Fifine, bear what I say in mind. We have not seen the last of Carabas. He has been hunting us through all the Hôtels and restaurants of Nîmes, and he is about to run us to earth.”
“Well, it is something to be so sought after for our young attractions,” was all she answered, and we continued our way to the amphitheatre. ”

“ Something simple but chic—dark blue or stone-colour, would be the best, I think; but I can trust you with the choice.”
The choice put me to some pleasant pains, nevertheless; but I need not have disturbed myself. There are angles and angels; there are also women who adorn everything they put on, and those whom nothing adorns. With the memory of Marion fresh upon me, I could only bask in serene contemplation of Fifine’s management of material no better and no more effective than that so injuriously misused by my step-sister. ”

“ In all else but that we were wholly one and inseparable, in trust, in truth, in perfect confidence.
We had it all out, of course, on the subject of those erst-peevish perversities and misunderstandings. There is no joy like a converted jealousy; quarrels become relishes when they can be discussed impartially. I told Fifine of my savage decision, on the hill that fateful night, to achieve the world-conquering work which was to refute and overwhelm her with a sense of what she had thrown away. ”

“ It was obvious that the morning light had done nothing to reform that question of identification.
“They think you a connexion of mine, whom I am escorting to Paris at Marion’s request,” I went on. “You have nothing to do but uphold that fiction, and steer clear of all compromising details. Just hold your tongue about yourself, that is all. They go to-morrow.”
“Why should I do anything?” said Fifine. “They are not my friends.” ”

“ The landlord came, apologised, expressed a thousand regrets. All propitiation was in vain. The disappointed troubadour fumed, refused, with many venomous “Bahs” and sarcastic “Chahs,” every offer of an alternative plat, expressed his mortification in a growing fury of speech and emphasis, finally snatched up his hat and gloves from the chair beside, and stalked out of the room, followed by the still protesting hôtelier.
And so he disappeared from our lives, never to enter them again. We sat without a word, quiet as mice. Presently I looked at Fifine, my eyes twinkling. ”

“ What should I do—what say? Nothing, I resolved, after I had thought it all well out; but just let things take their course. In masterly inactivity lay the solution of most problems of conduct.
Mademoiselle my sister, the landlady informed me, when presently I returned to the Hôtel, had wished me to be informed that she had retired to bed with a slight headache, and did not desire to be disturbed. So? Then she should not be disturbed by me. I was merely the looker-on in a quaint little game of cross-purposes.
Fifine was before me at the breakfast-table the next morning. ”

“ Never suppose that I forgot my responsibility to my charge, or my tremendous respect for the rank that condescended to me, or that Fifine herself made any motion of unbending in the matter of that mutual understanding. She trusted in me without question, and I never gave her cause to question.
Not that I will pretend the situation found me entirely without qualms of a sort. Nature, it must be admitted, abhors a Platonism, and I was not superior to Nature. Moreover, I could never quite forget Marion’s curiously ambiguous language in delivering my trust to me. ”

“ The perversity of my attitude struck me all at once as being in the last degree ridiculous, and it behoved me to hasten to amend it if I would not lose all faith in myself as a reasonable and consistent being. How could Fifine, a child sixteen years my junior, be expected to hold herself the exclusive property of a companion so sober and mature, or to waive on my behoof her perfectly natural instincts for coquetry and flirtation? ”

“ He is of the great succession—a minstrel worthy to be compared with Raymond Ferraud, both for his verse and his excessive gallantry.”
Fifine and I went out for a final stroll before bedtime, which in the vagabond’s life comes early.
“That landlord,” I said, “is a well-informed man. I have read of that Raymond—a distinguished rascal, who actually persuaded a lady president of the puissant Court of Love at les Baux to share his melodious wanderings with him. They called one another in these connexions commère—or gossip, as we might say. It is a good thought, Fifine: supposing we adopt it? ”