Zut, and Other Parisians

The Only Son of His Mother

IN the limited understanding of Pépin dwelt one great Fact, in the shadow of which all else shrank to insignificance, and that Fact was the existence of Comte Victor de Villersexel, the extremely tall and extraordinarily imposing person who was, first of all, Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, second, Membre de l'Académie Française, and, lastly, father to Pépin himself. It must be acknowledged that to the more observing of his limited kinsfolk and extensive acquaintance the clay feet of Pépin's idol were distinctly in evidence. How he had contrived to attain to the proud eminence which he occupied was, in the earlier days of his publicity, a matter of curious conjecture and not over-plausible explanation. Certainly no inherent merit or ability it was which formed the first step of the stairway he had climbed. In diplomacy the Comte de Villersexel had never bettered his first appointment as second secretary of legation at Belgrade; in literature his achievements were limited to one ponderous work on feudalism, remarkable chiefly for its surpassing futility; and in society his sole claim to consideration lay in his marriage to a Brazilian heiress, who had died within the year, leaving her husband an income of two hundred thousand francs – and Pépin. In all this it was difficult to find a sufficient reason for the crimson button and the green embroidered coat, unless it was that the family of de Villersexel went back to the Crusades. That is not always a prudent thing for a family to do, but the present instance was an exception.

Born to the heritage of a name which his predecessors had made notable, Comte Victor was one of those whose greatness is thrust upon them rather than achieved, one of the bubbles in the ferment of Paris which their very levity brings to the top, to show rainbow tints in the sunlight of publicity. It is probable that no one was more surprised than de Villersexel himself at the honors which fell to his share, but one thing even the most contemptuous had, perforce, to concede. Once secure of his laurels, he wore them with a confidence that was akin to conviction. His reserve was iron-clad, his dignity stupendous. It required considerable time for new acquaintances to probe the secret of his insufficiency. Victor de Villersexel was, as the irreverent young military attaché at the American Embassy once said of him, "a dazzling imitation of the real thing."

But to Pépin the idol was an idol without flaw. Through what shrewd appreciation of occasional words and chance comments he had contrived to grasp the significance of that speck of scarlet upon the Count's lapel and that apparently simple phrase, "de l'Académie Française," which, in formal introductions, was wont to follow his father's name, must be numbered among childhood's mysteries. But before he was seven, Pépin had solved these problems for himself, and the results of his reasoning were awestruck admiration and blind allegiance to the will of this wonderful creature who never smiled. His own small individuality was so completely overshadowed by that of his father that in the latter's presence the child was scarcely noticeable, dressed in his sober blouses, and creeping about the stately rooms of the great apartment in the avenue d'Iéna with an absolutely noiseless step. He was all brown, was Pépin: brown bare legs, and brown hands, very small and slender, brown hair, cropped short and primly parted, and deep brown eyes, eloquent of unspoken and unspeakable things. He was earnest, his tutor said, earnest and willing, but not bright, poor Pépin! He spoke English, to be sure, with a curious accent caught from his Cornish nurse, but that was due not so much to ability as to enforced association. In his French grammar and such simple arithmetic as was required of him he was slow and often stupid. But he was rarely scolded, and never punished. Once, indeed, the Comte had been about to strike him for some trifling fault, but somehow the blow, for which Pépin stood waiting, never fell.

"He is like his mother," the légionnaire had muttered, as he turned away, "an imbecile – but" —

Pépin, catching the unfinished phrase, grew sick with a great discouragement, mingled with profound pity for the man before him. It must be a dreadful thing for one so famous to be the father of an imbecile! From that day on the child was more inconspicuous than before.

Deliberately affected in the first instance, what was known in society as de Villersexel's "academic manner" came in course of time to be second nature. Practice made perfect the chill reserve which was originally assumed as a precaution against possible discovery of his vapidity; and as the image of what the academician had been, before his election, grew dimmer in society's recollection, his impressive solemnity, barely disguised by a veneer of superficial courtesy, did not fail of its effect. He was spoken of as a man in whom much lay below the surface, and his more recent acquaintances coupled their estimate of his character with the proverbial profundity of still waters, and the familiar gloved fist of steel. Others, more observant, smiled at the similes, but did not go to the pains of proving them ill applied. One of the most characteristic things about the Comte de Villersexel was that he inspired neither championship nor antagonism.

With all this, he was consistent, with that curious obstinacy which is sometimes made manifest in the shallowest natures. His rôle, once assumed, was, as we have said, played to perfection and never laid aside. The domestic threshold, which is, for the majority of men, a kind of uncloaking room, saw never an alteration, even of voice or expression, in his pose. The household affairs were regulated with almost military precision, and once a day, at noon, Pépin and his father met in the large salon, – the Comte in his tall satin stock and frock coat, and Pépin fresh from the careful hands of his nurse. They shook hands gravely, and then waited in silence, until the maître d'hôtel announced breakfast, —

"Ces messieurs sont servis!"

What meals they were, to be sure, those déjeuners, solemnly served, and more solemnly eaten, under the rigid observation of three menservants; de Villersexel, with his thin lips, his cold eyes, and his finely pointed gray mustache, barely moving save to raise his fork or break a morsel from his roll, and Pépin, all brown, perched like a mouse on the edge of a great chair, and nibbling at tiny scraps of food with downcast eyes!

At the very end, as the Comte was about to push back his chair, he would invariably raise his glass of champagne and Pépin his, wherein a few drops of red wine turned the Evian to a pale heliotrope, and together they would glance toward the full-length portrait which hung above the mantel.

"Ta mère!" said the Comte.

"Maman!" replied Pépin.

And so they drank the toast of tribute to the dead.

After breakfast, the father would read for an hour to the child, and Pépin, seated on another large chair, would listen, perfectly motionless, striving desperately to understand the long sentences which fell in flawlessly pronounced succession from the Academician's lips. De Villersexel had a fairly clear recollection of what books had been the companions of his childhood, and these he purchased in the rarest editions, and clothed in the richest bindings, and read to Pépin: only his remembrance did not extend to a very distinct differentiation between seven and fifteen, for it was at the latter age that he read "Télémaque" to himself, and at the former that he read "Télémaque" to his son.

Then would come a second formal handshake, and Pépin, pausing an instant at the door to make a slow, stiff bow, would creep off down the long corridor to the nursery, and the Comte turn again to his papers with a consciousness of paternal duty done.

How Pépin contrived to spend the long hours which his daily walk and his short lessons left at his disposal, only Pépin knew. He talked rarely with the servants, – "a thing," his father told him, "that no gentleman would wish to do;" and other children never entered at the de Villersexel door, "for," said the Comte, "children sow unfortunate ideas and spread disease."

But there were compensations. One was the full-length portrait over the chimney-piece in the dining-room. Pépin had no conception of how great was the signature it bore, or of the fabulous sum which it had cost, but he knew it was very beautiful, and, besides, it was his mother, – the sad-eyed, pale dream-mother he had never seen.

The portrait of the Comtesse de Villersexel had been one of the sensations at the Salon of seven years before. The young Brazilian was represented at the moment when the bow left the strings of her violin, and on her lips and in her eyes yet dwelt the spirit of the music she had been playing. A clinging gown of ivory-white silk emphasized rather than hid the lines of her figure, of strangely girlish slenderness, but straight and proud as that of a young empress. In its frailty lay the keynote of the portrait's charm. It was like a reflection in clear water that a touch might disturb, or a young anemone that a breath might destroy, – not a picture before which people disputed and proffered noisy opinions, but one which imposed silence, like the barely audible note of a distant Angelus. It stood before the memory of its original, as it had been a spirit, finger on lip, at the doorway of a tomb.

This portrait of his mother dominated the life of Pépin like the half-remembered substance of a dream. He had known nothing of her in the life, for the breath of being had passed from her lips to his at the moment of his birth, but with the intuition of childhood, he seemed to know that this was one who would have loved him and whom he would have loved. He spent hours before the picture, silent, spell-bound, gazing into the deep and tender eyes that shone with the same pathetic pleading that lay so eloquently in his own, and the only outbreak of rage which had ever stirred his simple serenity was on one occasion when his nurse had found him thus absorbed, and, receiving no response to her summons, half alarmed and half indignant, reproached him with wasting his time before a stupid picture. Then Pépin had whirled around upon her, his lips compressed, his small brown hands clenched, and a look in his eyes that terrified even the stout and prosaic Cornish-woman out of her accustomed attitude of fat complacency.

"A stupid picture?" he stormed. "But it is my mother, do you hear, my mother! You are a wicked woman, Elizabeth!"

It was when Pépin was nearing his seventh birthday that a wonderful thing happened. The Comte was giving a great reception to the Russian Ambassador, and on an impulse which, perhaps, even he himself could hardly have explained, sent for his son. The child was aroused from sleep, and, but half awake and totally uncomprehending, was submitted by the worthy Elizabeth to a veritable cyclone of washing, combing, and brushing, and finally, clad in spotless duck, was led by the maître d'hôtel down the long corridor to the door of the grand salon, which, at his approach, swung open under the touch of one of the under servants. Pépin, dazed by the radiance of many lights and a great clamor of voices, paused on the threshold, and, with a swift intuition of what was demanded of him, made his slow, stiff bow.

"Le Vicomte de Villersexel," said the maître d'hôtel in a loud voice at his side, and Pépin, seeing his father beckon to him from the group where he stood, slipped close to him through the crowd, and was surprised to find that the Comte took his hand in his, and bent forward to say in a whisper, —

"You are to hear Pazzini play the violin. That is why I sent for you. He was your mother's teacher."

Like all that had gone before, what followed was to Pépin like a dream – a beautiful dream, never to be forgotten. A great hush had settled upon the brilliant assemblage, for even in Paris there are still things which society will check its chatter to hear, and the tall, gray-bearded man, consulting with the pianist over there, was Pazzini, the great Pazzini, whose services had been more than once commanded by royalty in vain. De Villersexel had drawn Pépin nearer to the piano in the brief interval, and as the opening chords of the introduction were struck, he found himself but a few feet from the famous violinist, his hand still linked in that of his father, his eyes fixed in wonder upon this unknown man who had been his mother's teacher.