Chapter 4: Modus Vivendi

Smith’s luggage and mine, and my other effects—trunks, boxes, and crates—arrived very early the next morning: and several large, sweating Swiss staggered up the stairs with the impedimenta until both they and their job were finished.

When I left New York, not knowing how long this business of my ridiculous inheritance might detain me in Switzerland, I packed several trunks with clothing and several crates with those familiar and useful—or useless—objets-d’art which for many years had formed a harmless and agreeable background for my more or less blameless domestic career in New York.

Rugs, curtains, furniture, sofa-pillows, books, a clock mantel set, framed and unframed pictures and photographs including the O’Ryan coat-of-arms—all this was the sort of bachelor stuff that Smith and I disinterred from the depths of trunks, crates, and boxes, and lugged about from corner to corner trying effects and combinations.

Before we had concluded our task I think he had no opinion at all of me as an interior decorator. Which revealed considerable insight on his part. And although I explained to him that interior decorators became so fed up on gorgeous and sumptuous effects that they themselves preferred to live amid simpler surroundings reminiscent of the Five and Ten Cent Store, he remained unconvinced.

“It’s like a lady-clerk in a candy shop,” I insisted. “She never eats the stuff she sells. It’s the same with me. I am surfeited with magnificence. I crave the humble what-not. I long for the Victorian. I need it.”

He gazed in horror at a framed picture of my grandfather the Admiral.

“Oh God,” he said, “what are we to do with this old bird?”

Intensely annoyed I took it from him and hung it over my mantel. It wasn’t a Van Dyck, I admit, but it demanded no mental effort on my part. One can live in peace with such pictures.

“Some day, Smith,” said I, “you’ll understand that the constant contemplation of true Art is exhausting. A man can’t sleep in a room full of Rubens. When I put on my dressing gown and slippers and light a cigarette what I want is relaxation, not Raphael. And these things that I own permit me to relax. Why,” I added earnestly, “they might as well not be there at all so little do they distract my attention. That’s the part of art suitable for domestic purposes, —something that you never look at, or, if you do, you don’t want to look at it again.”

He said: “I couldn’t sleep here. I couldn’t get away from that old bird over the mantel. However, it’s your room.”

“It is.”

“Doubtless you like it.”

“Doubtless.”

“On me,” he remarked, “it has the effect of a Jazz band.” And he went into his own apartment. For half an hour or so I fussed and pottered about, nailing up bunches of photographs fanwise on the walls, arranging knickknacks, placing brackets for curtain-poles and shoving the poles through the brass rings supporting the curtains. They had once belonged to the Admiral. They were green and blue with yellow birds on them.

After I finished draping them, I discovered that I had hung one pair upside down. But the effect was not so bad. In domestic art one doesn’t want everything exactly balanced. Reiteration is exasperating; repetition aggravating to the nerves. A chef-d’oeuvre is a priceless anæsthetic: duplicated it loses one hundred per cent of its soporific value. I was glad I had hung one pair of curtains upside down. I went into Smith’s room. He was shaving and I had him at my mercy.

“The principal element of art,” said I to Smith, “is beauty—or rather, perhaps, the principal element of beauty is art—I am not very clear at this moment which it is. But I do know that beauty is never noisy. Calm and serenity reign where there is no chattering repetition of effects. Therefore, as an interior decorator, I always take liberties with the stereotyped rules of decoration. I jumble periods. I introduce bold innovations. For example: Old blue plates, tea-pots and sugar-bowls I do not relegate to the pantry or the china-closet where they belong. No. I place them upon a Louis XV commode or a Victorian cabinet, or on a mantel. A clock calms the irritating monotony of a side-board. A book-case in the bath-room produces a surprisingly calm effect amid towels and tooth-mugs. A piano in the dining room gives tone ... if played. And so, in my profession, Smith, I am always searching for the calm harmony of the inharmonious, the unity of the unconventional, and the silence of the inexplicable. And, if I may venture to say so, I usually attain it. This is not a business card.”

And having sufficiently punished Smith, I returned to my own room.

Lovingly, and with that unerring knowledge born of instinct, I worked away quite happily all the morning decorating my room, and keeping one eye on Smith to see that he didn’t drift toward the kitchen. He betrayed a tendency that way once or twice but desisted. I think he was afraid I might decorate his room in his absence. He need not have worried: I wanted all my things in my own room.

While I was busy hanging some red and pink curtains in my dressing-room and tacking a yellowish carpet to the floor—a definitely advanced scheme of color originating with me—I heard voices in the rear court and, going to the window, beheld my consignment of brand new servants arriving from Berne by diligence.

Smith, who had come up beside me to peer out through the blinds, uttered an exclamation.

“That girl in Swiss peasant dress!—she looks like the twin sister to your cook!”

“She is her sister. But she isn’t nearly as pretty.”

“She’s infinitely prettier!” he asserted excitedly. “She’s a real beauty!—for a peasant.”

I corrected him in my most forbearing manner: “What you are trying to convey to me,” said I, kindly, “is that the girl is flamboyantly picturesque, but scarcely to be compared to Thusis for unusual or genuine beauty. That’s what you really mean, Smith; but you lack vocabulary.”

“Whatever I lack,” he retorted warmly, “I mean exactly what I said! For a peasant, that girl is beautiful to an emphatic degree, —far more so than her sister Thusis. Be kind enough to get that.”

I smiled patiently and pointed out to him that the hair of the newcomer was merely light golden, not that magnificent Venetian gold-red of Thusis’ hair; and that her eyes were that rather commonplace violet hue so much admired by cheap novelists. I don’t know why he should have become so animated about what I was striving to explain to him: he said with unnecessary heat: “That’s what I’m trying to drive into your Irish head! That girl is beautiful, and her red-headed sister is merely good-looking. Is my vocabulary plain?”

I began to lose my temper: “Smith,” said I, “you fell for Thusis before I noticed her at all——”

“I merely called your attention to the resemblance between her and your photograph of ‘The Laughing Girl.’ And I did not ‘fall for her’—as you put it with truly American elegance——”

“Confound it!” I exclaimed, “what do you mean by ‘American elegance’? Don’t hand me that, Smith—you and your ‘My girl’s a corker!’ Of the two of us you’d be picked for a Yankee before I’d be. And I have my own ideas on that subject, too—you and your Sagas about—

“‘She plays the races’——”

“In my travels,” he said, looking me straight in the eye, “it has happened that I have picked up a few foreign folk-songs. You understand me, of course.”

“Yes,” I replied amiably. “I think I get you, Smith. Whatever you say goes; and you’re a Viking as far as I’m concerned.”

The slightest shadow of a grin lurked on his lips. “Good old Michael,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. And, reconciled, we looked out of the window again in brotherly accord. Just in time to see the golden-haired sister of Thusis rise and jump lightly from the wagon to the grass.

“Did you see that!” he demanded excitedly. “Did you ever see such grace in a human being? Did you, Michael?”

What was the use? I saw nothing supernaturally extraordinary in that girl or in her flying leap. Of course she was attractive in her trim, supple, dainty, soubrette-like way. But as for comparing her to Thusis!——

“Her name’s Clelia,” I remarked, avoiding further discussion. “She’s to do the rooms; Thusis waits on table and runs our establishment; and that other girl down there—her name is Josephine Vannis, I believe—she is to cook for us. You know,” I added, “she also is very handsome in her own way...”

He nodded without interest. She seemed to be of the Juno type, tall, dark-haired, with velvet eyes and intensely white skin, —too overwhelmingly classical to awaken my artistic enthusiasm. In fact she rather scared me.

“And to think that six-foot goddess is my new cook,” said I, rather awed. I took another intent survey of the big, healthy, vigorous, handsome girl; and I determined to keep out of her kitchen and avoid all culinary criticism.

“She’d not hesitate to hand us a few with a rolling-pin,” I remarked. “Juno was celebrated for her quick temper, Shan, so don’t find fault with your victuals.”

“No,” he said very earnestly, “I won’t.”

My new gardener was now carrying in the assorted luggage, —bundles and boxes of sorts done up in true peasant fashion with cords.

He seemed to be a sturdy, bright, good-looking young fellow with keen black eyes and a lively cock-sure manner.

“He’ll raise jealousies below stairs,” remarked Smith. “That young fellow is the beau ideal of all peasant girls. He’ll be likely to raise the deuce below stairs with Thusis and Juno.”

Somehow or other the idea of such rustic gallantry did not entirely please me. Nor did Smith’s reference to Thusis and his cool exclusion of Clelia.

“I don’t believe Thusis would care for his type,” said I carelessly. “And if he gets too—too——” I hesitated, not exactly knowing what I had meant to say.

“Sure,” nodded Smith; “fire him if he bothers Clelia.”

I dimly realized then that I didn’t care whether he cut up with Clelia or not. In fact, I almost hoped he would.

A little later when I was in my room, alone, and agreeably busy, there sounded a low and very discreet knocking at my door. Instantly my pulse, for some unexplained reason, became loud and irregular.

“Come in,” said I, laying aside my work—some verses I had been composing—trifles—trifles.

Thusis came in.

As the hostile Trojans rose unanimously to their feet when Helen entered—rose in spite of their disapproval—so I got up instinctively and placed a chair for her. She merely dropped me a curtsy and remained standing.

“Please be seated,” said I, looking at her with uneasy suspicion.

“Monsieur O’Ryan forgets himself,” she protested in the softest and most winningly demure of voices. But I saw the very devil laughing at me out of her gray eyes.

“I don’t know why a man should receive his servants standing,” said I. “Sit down,” I added coldly, seating myself.

“Pardon, but I could not venture to seat myself in Monsieur’s presence——”

Perfectly conscious of the subtle mockery in her voice and manner, I told her sharply to be seated and explain her errand. She curtsied again—a most devilishly impudent little curtsey—and seated herself with the air of a saint on the loose.

“My thisther Clelia, and my friend Jothephine Vannith, and Raoul Dethpreth requetht the honor of rethpectfully prethenting themthelves to Monsieur’s graciouth conthideration,” she said with an intentional lisp that enraged me.

“Very well,” I replied briefly. “You may go back and get rid of your lisp, and then explain to them that you are to be waitress and general housekeeper here, and that they are to take their orders from me through you.”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

I don’t think she relished my dry bluntness for I saw a slight color gather in her cheeks.

I thought to myself that I’d come very close to spoiling the girl by my silliness in the cellar. I’d made a fool of myself, but I’d do it no more in spite of her heavenly resemblance to my photograph.

“That will be all at present, Thusis,” I said coldly. “Come back in half an hour for orders. And see that you wear a clean apron.”

Her lovely face was quite red as she passed out, forgetting to curtsey. As for my own emotions they were mixed.

One thing was certain; there was going to be a show-down between Thusis and me before very long.

If she were indeed the peasant girl she pretended to be, she’d recover her balance when I did, and learn her proper place. If she were, perhaps, a child of the bourgeoisie—some educated and superior young girl compelled to take service through family misfortune—and I now entertained no further doubt that this was really the case—she had nobody but herself to blame for my present attitude.

But!—but if, by any inexplicable chance, her social circumstances were, or had once been, even better than bourgeoise, then the girl was a political agent in masquerade. But, whoever she was, she had no business to presume on her wit and insolent beauty to amuse herself at my expense. And if she had really been sent by the Swiss police into my household to keep an eye on me she was going about it in a silly and stupid manner.

For such surveillance I didn’t care a pewter penny. Spies had lagged after me ever since I entered Switzerland. It was rather amusing than otherwise.

But, as far as Thusis was concerned, I now decided that, no matter what she was or had been, she had voluntarily become my servant; and I intended that she should not again forget that fact.