The Short Reign of Pippin IV (6 page)

“Madame,” he cried, “I did not call down the meteor shower.”

“Nor did I decay the casks at Auxerre.”

“I have no choice, Madame.”

She seemed to grow to a tower with castellations, and darkness hung about her like a personal thunderstorm.

“M'sieur is master of the house,” she said. “If M'sieur wishes to allow the meteors to bring bankruptcy down on the heads of his family—who am I to complain? I must go to apologize to Rose. A kilo of strangulated cheese is a laughable nothing compared to the blobs of light on film. Can one eat meteors, M'sieur? Can one wear them to keep out the night damp? Can one make wine barrels of these precious meteors? M'sieur, I leave you to make your choice.” And she moved on quiet, deadly feet out of the room.

Anger fought with panic in Pippin Héristal. Through the double glass doors he could see his telescope in its garment of waterproof silk. And anger won. He walked sternly down the stairs, crushed his hat on his head, took his stick from the rack and Clotilde's briefcase from the table. With furious dignity he crossed the courtyard and waited while the concierge opened the iron gate. In a moment of weakness he looked back and saw Madame watching him from the kitchen window and Rose scowling happily beside her.

“I am going to see Uncle Charlie,” said Pippin Héristal, and he slammed the iron gate behind him.

 

 

Chalres Martel was proprietor of a small but prosperous art gallery and antique store in the Rue de Seine, a dark and pleasant place with pictures properly ill-lighted and provocative. He sold unsigned paintings which he would not guarantee as early Renoirs, and also bits of crystal, gilt, and chinoiserie which he could and did attest as coming from the great and ancient houses of France.

At the rear of the gallery a red velvet curtain concealed one of the most comfortable and discreet bachelor's quarters in all Paris. The chairs, softened by velvet cushions stuffed with down, were a joy to sit in. His bed, a triumph of Napoleonic work in gilded wood, had high curved head and foot like the prow and stern of a Viking dragon ship. During the day a cover and pillows made from softly faded altar cloths converted his sleeping arrangements into a charming nook, inviting and subtly sinful. Green-shaded lamps spread just enough light in the room to bring out beauties and to conceal defects. His cooking arrangements, a sink and a gas ring, were hidden behind a Chinese screen mellowed by the years to pearly black and melted butter. His bookcase was filled with leather and gold volumes, inviting to the eye without demanding that they be read.

Charles had always been a worldly man, gentle but inflexible, of impeccable carriage and dress. Now in his late sixties, he still adored ladies and his manner made ladies of all women until they insisted otherwise. Even now, when his impulse aimed more toward sleep than gallantry, he nevertheless kept his standard so high that selected young ladies felt a pleasant thrill on being invited past the red velvet curtain for an aperitif. And to the best of Charles's ability, they were not disappointed. A little door opened on an alleyway behind the shop—a small thing, but one to give his companions confidence.

When the custodian of an ancient name and a bat-ridden château required a relaxing day at Auteuil or a new lining for a fur-collared topcoat, where was there a better place to take the crystal chandelier from the ballroom or the inlaid piquet table once the property of a king's mistress than to the gallery of Uncle Charlie? And a chosen group of customers understood that, if pressed, Charles Martel could come up with a rarity. Willie Chit-ling, the movie producer, built the entire bar in his ranch house at Palm Springs with the furniture, paneling, and thirteenth-century altar from the chapel of the Château Vieilleculotte. Charles also made reasonable loans. He was said to hold the personal IOUs of nine out of the Twelve Peers of France.

Charles Martel was the uncle and friend of Pippin Arnulf Héristal. He went out of his field of art and bric-a-brac to trace the Bix Beiderbecke records for Pippin's almost perfect collection. Also he was his nephew's adviser in matters spiritual and temporal.

When M. Héristal stormed into the gallery in the Rue de Seine, Charles noted that he had come in a taxi. The mission was therefore serious.

Charles gestured his nephew past the velvet curtain and quickly concluded the sale of a Louis Quinze make up box to an elderly lady tourist for whom it had no practical value. He closed the negotiation not by lowering the price but by suddenly raising it, which convinced the lady that she should buy it at once or she wouldn't get it at all. Charles bowed her out of the gallery, shut the front door, and hung a battered card which read “Closed for Renovation.” Then he himself went past the velvet curtain and greeted his pacing nephew.

“You are troubled, my child,” he said. “Sit down, sit down. Let me give you a drop of cognac for your nerves.”

“I am in a fury,” Pippin said, but he did sit down and he did accept the cognac.

“It is Marie?” said Uncle Charlie. “Or perhaps Clotilde?”

“It is Marie.”

“It is about money?”

“It is about money,” said Pippin.

“How much?”

“I did not come to borrow.”

“You come, then, to complain?”

“Exactly, to complain.”

“A good idea. It removes pressures. You will return to your home in a more agreeable humor, in a word a better husband. Do you wish to be specific in your complaint?”

Pippin said, “An unpredicted meteor shower has blundered into earth's atmosphere. My camera is not adequate to—well, I need a new camera.”

“Expensive, and Marie does not find it necessary?”

“You understand the situation very well. She wears her hurt look, that damnable injured expression. She is planning revenge.”

“You have bought the camera?”

“Not yet.”

“But you have decided.”

“Understand, my uncle, it is unusual to find showers of meteors at this season. Who knows what is going on up there? Do not forget that it was I who first reported the Elysée Comet. I was commended by the Academy. It is whispered that in the not too distant future I may be elected.”

“Congratulations, my child. What an honor! While I myself do not view the heavens with passion, I support passion, whatever its source. Begin your complaint, my dear nephew. Now—I am Marie and you are you. Shall we start with the undeniable fact that your income springs from your property, rather than from
dot
?”

“Exactly.”

“This land has belonged to your family since the dawn of history.”

“Since the Salic Franks invaded from the east.”

“In very truth your vineyard hills are the remains of a kingdom.”

“An empire.”

“You stem from a family so ancient, so noble, that you do not condescend to remind the upstart nobility of your origin by use of titles clearly yours.”

“You put it very well, Uncle Charlie. And all I want is a new camera.”

“There,” said Charles. “You feel better now?”

“I really do.”

“Let me lend you the money for the camera, my child. You can pay it back little by little. Marie does not shy at little things—it is large expenditures which frighten and confuse her.”

“I did not come to borrow.”

“You have not asked. I have offered. You will purchase the camera. You will inform Marie that you have decided not to buy it. Does Marie know one camera from another?”

“Of course not. But will I not have surrendered my position in the house?”

“Quite the contrary, my child. You will have put her in a position of guilt. She will urge you to buy many little things. Thus you will repay the loan.”

“I wonder you have never married.”

“I prefer to see other people happy. Now—for what amount shall I make the check?”

 

 

When M. Héristal had slammed the iron gate and stormed to the taxi rank on Avenue Gabriel, Madame, for all her cold and deadly triumph, was shaken and uncertain—and at such times it was her habit to visit her old friend Sister Hyacinthe in her convent not far from the Porte de Vincennes—a large, low, orderly building within sight of the Bois. Madame changed her dress, took purse and black shopping bag, and took the métro.

Sister Hyacinthe had been her childhood friend and moreover they had gone to school together. Suzanne Lescault was a pretty child, with a thin, true singing voice and a natural ability as a dancer so that she dominated the pageants and little plays of the school. Inevitably Suzanne rose from wood sprite to fairy queen to Pierrette, and later, for three successive years, she acted
Joan the Maid
to the complete satisfaction of its authoress, the Sister Superior. And Marie, who could neither sing nor dance, far from being jealous, adored her gifted friend and felt that she somehow participated in her triumphs.

In the normal course of events Suzanne would have married and retired her talents and her blossoming figure. However, a distant manipulation of the Crédit Lyonnais and the subsequent suicide of her father, an officer in that organization, left Suzanne with a sickly mother, a dwarflike schoolboy brother in a black smock, and the necessity for making her way in the world. Only then did the often heard comment that she should be on the stage make some sense to Suzanne and more to her mother.

The Comédie Française had no immediate openings but took her name, and while she waited Suzanne was employed by the Folies Bergère, where her voice, her grace, and her high and perfect bosom were instantly appreciated and utilized. Her mother's professional illness, and her brother's interminable education, followed by his death by misadventure with a motorcycle, made it economically unsound for Suzanne to jeopardize a permanent and well-paid position for the uncertainty of higher art.

For many years she graced the stage of the Folies, not only in the line of lovely undressed girls, but also with speaking, singing, and dancing parts. After twenty years of complicated and complaining illness, her mother died without a single symptom. By this time Suzanne had become not only a performer but ballet mistress.

She was very tired. Her bosom had remained high; her arches had fallen. She had lived a life of comparative virtue, as do most Frenchwomen. Indeed it is a matter of disillusion to young male Americans otherwise informed, to discover that the French are a moral people—judged, that is, by American country-club standards.

Suzanne wanted to rest her feet. She left a world about which she knew perhaps too much and after a proper novitiate took the veil as Sister Hyacinthe in an order of contemplation which demanded a great deal of sitting down.

As a nun Sister Hyacinthe radiated such peace and piety that she became an ornament to her order, while her knowledge and background made her both tolerant and helpful to younger sisters with troubles.

During all the years of both her lives she had maintained contact with her old school friend Marie. Even between visits they kept up a detailed and dull correspondence, exchanging complaints and recipes. Marie still adored her talented and now saintly friend. It was perfectly natural that she called upon her in the matter of the camera.

In the tidy and comfortable little visiting room of the convent near Vincennes, Marie said, “I am at my wit's end. In most things M'sieur is as considerate as one could wish, but where his ill-named stars are concerned he pours out money like water.”

Sister Hyacinthe smiled at her. “Why don't you beat him?” she asked pleasantly.

“Pardon? Oh! I see you make a jollity. I assure you it is a serious matter. The cooperage at Auxerre—”

“Is there food on the table, Marie? Is the rent paid? Have they cut off the electricity?”

“It is a matter of principle and of precedent,” said Marie a little stiffly.

“My dear friend,” said the nun, “did you come to me for advice or to complain?”

“Why, for advice of course. I never complain.”

“Of course not,” said Sister Hyacinthe, and she continued softly, “I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it. However, I will advise you.”

“Please do,” said Marie distantly.

“In my profession, Marie, I have had contacts with many men. I think I am in a position to make some generalities about them. First, they are like children, sometimes spoiled children.”

“Now there I agree with you.”

“The ones who really truly grow up, Marie, are no good because men are either children or old—there is nothing in between. But in their childlike unreason and irresponsibility there is sometimes greatness. Please understand that I know most women are more intelligent, but women grow up, women face realities—and women are very rarely great. One of the few regrets I have in my present profession is the lack of male nonsense. It at least makes for contrast,” said Sister Hyacinthe.

“He discovered a comet,” said Marie. “The Academy commended him. But this new camera business—that goes too far.”

“Again I ask—do you want my advice?”

“Of course.”

“Then advise him to buy the camera—insist on it.”

“But I have already taken my stand. I would lose his respect.”

“On the contrary,” said Sister Hyacinthe, “if you should advise the expenditure, even suggest a greater one, you might find a reluctance on his part to spend the money. He might then have to inspect realities instead of simply opposing you. They are very curious creatures, men.”

“I've brought you some handkerchiefs,” said Marie.