CHAPTER III

GRAND’MÈRE VERSUS GRANDMA

“I thought the Grojeans were absent—their house has been all the time shut up,” Caracal said to Ethel; “but I caught sight of them yesterday. They must be back.”

“We’ll go to-day and invite them to tennis,” Ethel said. “It will give so much pleasure to Mademoiselle Yvonne—and perhaps Will might be glad to see her again,” Ethel added to herself.

In the afternoon the auto, in all its splendor, flew along the way to the home of the Grojeans.

Caracal was delighted. Miss Rowrer had been very gracious to him. He would have gone oftener to Camp Rosemont, but he had been content to shine from afar on account of the drafts and mosquitos under the accursed tents. He kept to his lodgings at the Lion d’Or, a little inn full of flies and smelling of cabbage-soup.

“What a beautiful road this is!” Ethel observed. “You would say it was an avenue in a park, everything has such a refined air, so prinked and pretty, with its flowers set here and there!”

Every one was impressed by the gardens of flowers and the finished, distinguished look of everything. Will had the deepest enjoyment of it. His head may have been full of business, he may have handled his millions in his sleep, but he felt himself taken by this provincial charm. His love for it was the love of that which contrasts with one’s self. When he saw the hills crowned with oak and the inclosures bordered with roses, the variegated fields alive with vine and corn, a sweet country and a strong one, whose people greeted him with smiles, he seemed to forget all care, to be reading a poem.

“Will,” Ethel remarked, “is in love with France.”

Caracal kept his impressions to himself. A loftier anxiety was weighing on him: “The House of Glass” was about to appear. It was a thunderbolt which would soon burst and he would be famous; and, after the town, the country should have its turn! His work should be the life-encyclopedia of our day. He already had notes on the mosquitos, remarks on the grunting of pigs in their sties and the smells of the manure-heap. His novel would begin well.

“Tell me, M. Caracal,” Ethel chanced to ask just as he was thinking of all this, “have you found a title for your novel on country life which we were talking about the other day?”

“I am hunting for one, Miss Rowrer,” answered Caracal.

“I hope every one will be allowed to read it, even young girls,” she went on.

“Ah—” Caracal interrupted.

“Good!” Ethel said, “why should unpleasant things be written? Very dirty things some authors write, so I hear it said. I don’t understand this fouling of one’s own nest.”

Caracal hid his chagrin. To him a novel for the “young person”—a “proper” novel—was the lowest term of contempt. No, his would not be a rose-colored romance; it would be something that had been lived, thrilling with human passion, bleeding and fierce, even if it smelled of the stable and dung-hill—ah!—and he turned his Mephistophelian eye-glass toward the horizon.

A writer for young persons! The indignation which dictated his verses to Juvenal made Caracal find a title for his romance. “Let’s see,” he thought. “In fact, what title shall I give it? It must be something suggestive. For the city I have ‘The House of Glass’; would ‘The Pigsty’ do for the country? No, they’d say it was a treatise on breeding. ‘The Rose on the Dung-Hill’? No, they’d say it was poetry. ‘Dung-Hill’ alone is too short. ‘Worms from the Dung-Hill’—that’s the thing! comparing the country to a vast manure-heap with worms crawling through it.”

Secretly satisfied with this stroke of his genius, Caracal rubbed his hands.

As they drew near the town, the houses, scattered at first and amid gardens, became more numerous. The camping-party now jolted over the “King’s Pavement.” At a distance, above the low roofs, the spires of a church were seen. All at once they came out in the place where a few days before, through the blinds, when the sun-fountain marked four o’clock, the Grojeans had watched their passing by.

“The Grojean house?” A person standing near answered their inquiry: “It is the great doorway beyond there opening on the place.”

Brrr! and the auto was in front of the house.

There was a great door, studded with big iron nails, and a little wicket, with a grating in front of it, opening in the thickness of the wood. The front of the house, smooth and with drawn blinds, had a venerable look. The stroke of the knocker resounded long, as if re-echoing through an empty house. A moment passed.

They had time to notice the fine grass which grew between the stones of the walk and the foot of the wall, and the old escutcheon carved above the door.

“It is the Grojeans’ coat of arms,” Ethel explained in a low voice. “They belonged to the old _noblesse de robe_. One grandfather was a presiding judge, another was a chancellor.”

Just then the noise of the bolt was heard, the heavy door opened, and Mlle. de Grojean welcomed them on the threshold.

“I am delighted! What a pleasant surprise! You must excuse me for receiving you as I am. The servants have gone out and I was at work.”

“But you are charming as you are!” answered Ethel.

Mlle. Yvonne was certainly very pretty in her bib and apron, with her graceful neck issuing from the wide white collar, and her refined head, with its hair rolled like a helmet above it.

“Do come in!” she exclaimed.

The hallway, paved with marble, and with its lofty ceiling, surprised them by its coolness. To right and left there were double doors. At one side rose a great stone staircase with an iron railing and without carpet. On the wall there were a few old pictures, and these, with two benches of the time of Charles X, formed the furniture of the hall. At the foot, through a glass door, there was a view on a terrace leading down to the garden.

“Grand’mère, here are my Paris friends,” Mlle. Yvonne said, as she brought the party into the salon: “Mme. Rowrer, Miss Rowrer, Monsieur William, Monsieur Phil Longwill.”

Caracal kept himself to one side, smiling as if it were understood that he, a celebrated man, was superior to these poor children of the soil.

“M. Caracal, of Paris,” Miss Rowrer said, presenting him. “M. Caracal has come to study the country. He is preparing a book.”

“Ah! Monsieur is a professor of agriculture. You are welcome, monsieur,” grand’mère said, with simplicity, leaving Caracal to that isolation which is the lot of psychologues once they leave the Boulevard.

“I shall surely put you into my novel!” Caracal muttered to himself, in his vexation.

“If I had known, I would have taken the covers from the chairs,” said Mlle. Yvonne. “But sit down all the same, I beg of you. Mama will be very glad to see you. She is coming back. I will go fetch her.”

“Don’t mind, Yvonne,” said Ethel; “we will wait. You know,” she added, “everything is delightful to us here.”

There was the same dim light on the silken hangings and the furniture, reflecting its brasses. The air was fine and sweet, like the fragrance of the caskets of our grandmothers in family store-rooms. Through the windows, half open on the garden, they could hear the song of birds amid the groves.

Mme. de Grojean now came in. The chairs were moved from their formal rows and every one sat down. Conversation began.

The perfectly natural manners and air of high distinction of Mlle. Yvonne and Mme. de Grojean, found in the midst of their domestic occupations, were a pleasure to Will.

“You were working at this water-color?” Ethel asked of Mlle. Yvonne.

“No. I’m going to send that to a charity bazaar; but I was working at this.”

“This muslin gown?”

“Not just now,” said Yvonne, “I was scraping lint.”

“Lint! For what?”

“Why, for some expedition they are preparing; for the next war.”

Will and Ethel were in admiration at such simplicity of life, in which young girls sewed at their own muslin gowns for the yearly ball, and varied their employment by picking lint for the next war.

“Just imagine!” Ethel said to herself. “I pitied her in Paris because she never went anywhere! Quite the contrary, she must have been having a thoroughly good time. Those days must have been regular escapades, an excess of liberty, compared to this life of work and obscure duties.”

She looked in turn at Yvonne, in her high spirits, at her mother, who was so self-effacing, and at the rigid, conservative, severe grandmother.

“Have you many amusements here?” Ethel asked. “A theater, books, fine walks?”

“Oh!” answered Yvonne, “we hardly go to the theater—once or twice a year, perhaps—and we receive few books, we have so little time to read. But amusements are not wanting, I assure you. Sometimes I go to market, and there’s the care of the house, with preserves to make; there are the garden and the fruits. We must have an eye to everything.”

“Yvonne is very whimsical, too,” said grand’mère; “she wanted some canary birds! Nowadays, young girls have nothing but pleasure in their heads!”

“But birds are so amusing,” replied Yvonne. “Just now,” she added, “we are in a hurry with our gift to the soldiers—there are lint, preserves and tobacco and liqueurs, and linen to send them. We have a committee here, and we occupy ourselves with it at our monthly meetings. And when it isn’t that, it’s something else. My cousin Henri accompanies me at the piano, or I read French history or some treatise on education. I haven’t a minute to myself, especially here, because grand’mère is the president of the committee.”

“Alas! what a different idea of the Frenchwoman psychological novelists have been giving!” was Phil’s thought as he looked at Caracal, with his monocle glistening in the shadow.

“In your place, madame,” said grandma, speaking directly to grand’mère, “I’d start a committee for general disarmament.”

Mme. de Grojean opened her eyes wide. Ethel, who saw the effect which had been produced, hastened to say, “Grandma is joking.”

“Not at all, Ethel,” replied grandma. “The country is very pretty, with its flowers and its soldiers; but I prefer our Western plains, and I’d give all the military music in the world for our peaceful tunes.”

Grand’mère and grandma were face to face; they formed a perfect contrast to each other.

Grandma seemed to have in her clear eyes the sheen of the sea and of the prairies, where new dawns had arisen for her. Incredible energy could be read on her nervous features. One would have said that she was still young and active, and full of ambition; and, if she was able to talk with grand’mère, it was because during the past months she had begun again to speak and read French with as much ardor as a school-girl. She did not feel herself growing old so long as she improved herself. She detested things which never changed, homes too shut in, too hushed a silence, and too passive obedience. Leaning forward, she looked into the eyes of grand’mère. The latter was the majestic representative of changeless things, of tradition that must not be touched. Of what use is it to learn so much, since all sin comes from knowledge? And why change, since all through the centuries men have gone to war, while women stayed at home and spun.

Seated squarely back in her arm-chair, she looked like a tower of the Middle Ages, ready for the assault. She prepared her batteries and took from her arsenal replies a thousand years old, with which to overwhelm the assailant. To grandma asking, “Why not change?” grand’mère would answer, “What use to change?”

She had the proverbs of her ancestors all in line. Against the taste for travel she could throw this bomb: “Each in his place!” She would stifle the spirit of adventure with “A rolling stone gathers no moss!” Against the pursuit of progress her ammunition was ready: “The better is the enemy of the good.” And the daring ones who would attempt to climb up, in the name of modern ambition and equality for all, would receive from her mitrailleuse: “There was a frog who tried to become as big as an ox, and who burst in the endeavor!”

Last of all, if the enemy should really force a way into the stronghold, she had the crushing reply: “_Ça ne se fait pas_ [It isn’t done]!”

But grandma was not to be intimidated, and her best argument was Ethel herself.

“In America,” said grandma, “we haven’t the same idea of education. It’s the young girl’s Paradise!”

“But I am very happy here,” Yvonne said, smiling.

“Ignorance is bliss,” grandma thought to herself.

“With us,” Ethel said aloud, “a young girl like Yvonne, who has a taste for painting, would go to Paris to study.”

“Ah! _Seigneur!_ how could you imagine my going to live in Paris at my age!” exclaimed Yvonne’s mother.

“But you would remain here,” grandma said. “Your daughter would go alone.”

“_Est-il possible!_” grand’mère exclaimed.

“It is so pleasant,” grandma went on, “to have the whole world before you; it is so exciting to be in the strife and to feel one’s self alive at twenty. It is done every day with us and we are none the worse for it. On the contrary—”

“That I can see,” grand’mère admitted, looking at Ethel. Grand’mère found her charming, and could not understand how a young girl brought up with such liberty should be so nice.

Grandma continued: “The will ought to develop itself freely, just like the body. Women must know how to deliberate, to be fit companions for strong men; and a young girl ought to have some experience of life to make her way later and to choose her husband.”

“To choose a husband!” grand’mère cried; “but I suppose that is the parents’ concern?”

“Well, I declare!” was the answer of grandma, who did not declare often.

Yvonne was beginning to ask herself whether, since they were talking of husbands, they would not, quite by chance, send her to look for something which had been forgotten on the garden bench.

Ethel, to get away from the subject, spoke up: “Mme. de Grojean, I have a great favor to ask of you.”

“I grant it in advance,” said Mme. Grojean.

“It is this,” said Ethel. “We are camping in the grounds of the Comtesse de Donjeon. Oh! the establishment is quite simple, and more agreeable than a hotel, I assure you. We go fishing and walking and painting; we play the banjo. It is so pleasant to live in the open air, and I would be so glad if Yvonne could come with us. We should amuse ourselves so much.”

“And it would be so good to have these young people around me,” grandma added. “I love life and movement.”

“We shall go about the country in our auto,” Ethel continued. “We shall get up picnics, we shall have impromptu plays, with lanterns, when we have guests of an evening; and I count on Yvonne, Mme. de Grojean. It is granted in advance!”

“I should like it, if mama pleases,” ventured Yvonne, with a blush of pleasure.

“It is for grand’mère to decide, my dear Yvonne. Ask grand’mère. I am willing, if she is.”

The judge was about to pronounce. She meditated a moment. Mme. Rowrer and Miss Ethel were very kind, it was true. But would they always be present to look after Yvonne? Might not Yvonne sometimes go out alone with Monsieur William or Monsieur Phil? Her granddaughter walking with men! She hesitated no longer.

“It is impossible,” she said. “I thank you very much, Mlle. Rowrer, but it is impossible.”

The judge had pronounced, without appeal!

“Ah!” thought Ethel, “I understand how a young girl in France should take the husband they choose for her with eyes shut. It is to her own interest to escape from such family tyranny.”

“But we shall go to see Miss Ethel?” Yvonne asked.

“Oh, certainly! We shall go to pass an afternoon with you,” Mme. de Grojean said, encouraged by an indulgent smile from grand’mère, who, seated squarely in her arm-chair, murmured between her lips:

“Ah! how insatiable for pleasure young people are nowadays! As if birds and flowers in the garden were not enough! Soon we shall have girls playing like boys; they will talk of the theater and sport, of tennis and bicycles—horror!”

Yvonne, gay as usual, and without any expression of bitterness, spoke low with her grandmother.

“Grand’mère, what if I should prepare a light collation for our visitors?”

“You are right, my child,” said grand’mère; “here is the key of the preserve pantry.”

Every one was now talking. A visitor had just made her appearance—Mme. Riçois, the banker’s wife, alert and dimpling, as usual. Phil, Will, and Mme. de Grojean talked pleasantly together. Caracal, with an air of great importance, talked of bric-à-brac to Mme. Riçois. Grand’mère and grandma made peace together. They found an admirable common ground of interest. Grand’mère showed grandma, who looked at them like a connoisseur, the photographs of her grandchildren, boys and girls, and grand-nephews and -nieces. Grandma gave grand’mère a recipe for home-made pie.

“The collation is ready,” Yvonne said, as she opened from without one of the long windows on the terrace. Her joyful voice sounded through the salon as the floods of light came in with the perfume of mignonette and roses.

“Grand’mère,” Yvonne went on, “I have spread the collation under the arbor by the waterside. Is that right?”

“You have done well, my child,” said grand’mère.

Mlle. Yvonne smiled with pride, like a soldier receiving his general’s compliment. Without any more ado, they all crossed the terrace and went down into the garden. It stretched out with straight alleys bordered by cut box; and at each side thick trees isolated it from the rest of the world. In the center there was a little basin of rockwork. At the bottom of the garden, along the riverside, a trellis-work formed a shady arbor—a nook of dainty freshness. As they went down to it Yvonne threw bread-crumbs to the goldfish in the basin, and then showed her flower-borders, in which the blue and white and red blossoms were like a tricolor flag.

“I water them myself,” said Yvonne.

The table was spread under a trellis covered with honeysuckle. There were biscuits and preserves, fruits, cool water, liqueurs and wine and beer—all set out in perfect taste.

Yvonne served every one.

“Did you prepare all this yourself?” Ethel asked, in wonder. “And you also found time to adorn the table with flowers—you are a real fairy!”

A balustrade, over which ivy was growing, separated them from the river. On the other side of the water there spread out a vast plain, in which factory-chimneys were smoking.

“Only look at the contrast!” Ethel said, pointing to the plain across the river. “You would say it was America; while here, in this old garden, surrounded by walls, with Yvonne beside her flower-beds and all these savory fruits and beautiful golden grapes on their palings, I seem to be looking at old France!”

“Here’s to France!” Will said, lifting his glass, full of clear water.

“To America!” Yvonne replied, pouring out for herself a little white wine.

“To our alliance!” said the alert and dimpling Mme. Riçois, as she tossed down her glass of champagne, while the rest of the party, including grandma and grand’mère, gaily attacked the cakes and fruits.

“It’s understood, then, isn’t it, madame?” Ethel said to grand’mère, “we can count on Yvonne for an afternoon, and, if you are willing, we shall go together to see the fair.”

“It is understood,” answered grand’mère; “and we will go into the booths and the circus, too—and you must come also, Mme. Riçois. It will be a fête-day for us!”

“With pleasure,” said Mme. Riçois, filling her glass again in honor of the alliance.