THE CIRCLE OF CACHETTE

Fair Play, Volume I, Issue 6, 9 December 1893, Page 20

THE CIRCLE OF CACHETTE

By ROBERT C. V. MEYERS.

[.Copyright, 1891, by American. Press Association] I.

Mile, do Boncour was in a considerable quandary. And she liad never been in such a thing as a quandary till she became enthused over some Americans in Paris, their delightful chic, their ravishing sang froid, their piquant extensions of les convenances. She at that time told the compte, her brother, that she feared the ancien regime had become passe, while she was confident that she

belonged to New Prance under certain conditions, to the New World under any circumstances. Of course this greatly shocked the compte, and his friends to a man blamed him for having permitted Natalie so much latitude of association with the American ladies and their'peculiar ideas of the eternal fitness of tilings.

When Natalie met a Vassal* girl, in a costume by Felix, who told her that she worked for her living, the die was cast. Natalie was poor herself, the little diamonds bequeathed her by her grandaunt representing all the wealth she possessed, and tho compte’s unique speculations on the Bourse made even those tentative at times.

She determined to emulate the Vassar

girl, wear toilets by Felix, and earn her own living. She knew she dare not approach the compte witb this determination, so she watched - some American girls to find out the most effective way to cut loose from old, if picturesque,'associations*

When one lovely young thing, with eycs thejcolor of heaven and cheeks like tender young rose, leaves, told her she had trayeled::§rpund . the world “all by herself” and not a shadow of harm had b**Wehed to her, Natalie watched her

chaiice and went to Tiffany's to tidl UCi grandaunt’s quasi-historie diamonds. She was told that the stones were only large enough to be used in collar buttons, and was referred to a dealer with a generous type of nose, who offered her what seemed to her to be a ridiculously small sum of money for the jewels. But the Vassar girl worked for her living, and here was money sufficient to carry Natalie to New York and something over; besides/ the jewels were ridiculously small also. She let the diamonds go, wrote a letter to her brother that caused him to tear his hair and expunge her name from the family register and become the laughing stock of the Bourse for a bad quarter of an hour, and Natalie sailed for America and freedom, carrying a handbag and a cage, in which fluttered her pet canary. I believe there was something else that actuated her in this stage of her mad career, and that was that le compte had told her he intended to arrange a marriage between her and the old Marquis d’Epinville, whose head shook when he walked, who wore horribly large white artificial teeth, who drank the delectably green absinthe openly on tho boulevard and called ..Natalie “ma femme.”

At any rate, Natalie sailed for the states, and lauding in New York went to a beautiful hotel that almost took away her breath by its charges. In New York she met many of those she had known in the colony at Paris. But, not strange to say, they were not quite so friendly when they heard under what circumstances she had come to our hospitable shores, and one woman and mother threatened to write to the compte. Then the Vassar girl, who it turned out earned her own living by tying her papa’s white cambric cravats of evenings, for which task she received a yearly stipend which ran away into four figures, did not ask her to the house on the avenue, and informed her that for her part she would have thought it quite delightful to be the Marquise d’Epinville, especially as the marquis was so old and sure to have another stroke of paralysis soon. But Natalie was not to he discouraged, the combination of French nerve and American ideas is a motor whose power is only to be gauged by pneumatics. Natalie first of all moved from the beautiful hotel and established herself in a charming flat with a professional chaperon old enough to be anybody’s mother and plain enough to be the syndicate stepmother of all the virtues. Now Natalie defied criticism and made her effort toward making her way. She could not go hack to Paris, that was certain, and she did not intend to let America “go back oh her,” as a young man said, the Vassar girl’s brother, who met her and admired her, hut told his sister she’d better be a little careful, yon know. • Natalie could embroider ravishibgly; she had learned how, to do it from the

patient sisters in the convene where she had been educated. She embroidered now. It is uot'altogether an everyday event to have the sister of a count embroidering your table covers and putting your iuitials upon your linen, so the orders came in with considerable merriment and the pay was generous—you

could bardly offer the sister of a count, a might-have-been marquise, the beggarly sum you might give - to some poor soul in a garret.

So Natalij became more and more Americanized, and said “Chestnuts'’ to some of the stories of former magui licence told her autobiographically by her companion. She considered herself happy for the first time in her life. Of course there were moments when she suffered a little from mal du pays, when the lilies of France meant somethin to her after all, and she thought of manf&ni and papainPere la Chaise with the bead wreaths upon their tomb. Yet she would look up at such times to Cachette, her canary, which she had brought away with her from Paris, and Bay: .

“Est-ce bien vous (Are you well), Cacbette?” and Cachette would twitter down to her in a wicked American way and aim for flies and say there were none on him. But after a few months patronage fell off—you cannot encourage even a count’s sister, a might-have-been marquise—beyond precedent. And just then there came to town the wife of an English baronet who was known to have inspired a tender passion in the breast of a prince, and might have become a princess only that the unwritten law of royalty forbade it. Then began that awful quandary of the rent. This quandary lasted several weeks.

Natalie wondered if she would have to take a cheaper fiat, go gradually down and down till she, finally landed in the' east;ade>V which she read so much about in tbepapersahd with so- much horror.' Bat the .cheaper flat oune nearer and

nearer every day till at last it could no longer be kept off. The companion made room for a lower priced article in the way of a half sized maid who conld scorch a chop and ruin eggs in the most accepted fashion. /

Still the greatest quandary of all was not yet.

That was next to it when Natalie had not the rent for this cheaper flat, the Yassar girl passed her on the street as one suddenly struck with blindness, and for days at a time Cacliette was tho only living creature she saw, the “girl” not counting as a living creature, in so much is she existed for the sole purpose of jpoiling whatever she undertook and warbling popular melodies to the accompaniment of piano organs that stopped under the windows. Natalie grew wild of gaze and took walks on the Brooklyn bridge and looked at the water with speculation in her eyes. And those eyes were remarkably fine ones, too, and consorted well with the clear white complexion and even teeth and a charming figure that came as the ineradicable bequest of a long line of cultivated ancestresses. Then it came about that Natalie was merely “the French girl,” and the was a less expensive one still and more heavenward, and “the girl” faded from the perspective, and money was a.scarce article indeed, and the shopkeepers said that really we did not want hand embroideries any more—they had gone out, don’t you see, and passementerie had taken their place. It is possible that Natalie’s Americanized ideas had undergone considerable moderation by this time, and of nights when she could not sleep for wondering how she would get through tomorrow maybe her thoughts flitted over to Paris and the gayly lighted streets and the theaters, the bright boulevards and the antiquated but kindly friendships she had once enjoyed—from all of which she was separated by more than time and distance.

“Oh, Cachette!” she would cry up to her inseparable companion with his head under his wing, “nous sommes etroitment unis!” (We are very closely united!) Then the great quandary of all came—she could not pay the rent for even her poor flat, her gown was very shabby, and the pot au feu was neither very succulent nor nutritious—and all this in a year!

The only work she had was a kerchief for Mrs. E. Platt Clayton, and she cried so much that she could hardly see to do it and made a false stitch here and there. In Paris she had met Mrs. E. Platt Clayton at a reception—of which more anon—and the lady held to her yet. Though it may as well be confessed just here that Mrs. E. Platt Clayton had ulterior views, regarding her friendliness, and her sisters and sisters-in-law were beginning to complain; for Mrs. E. Platt Clayton had sent them so many useless em broideries that they spoke among themselves, and : mutually owned ‘ that Amelia had always been a little odd

that maybe it had gone to her head. Still, eccentricity was a fad in these times—look at the English! The truth is that Mi\s. E. Platt Clayton was au artist.' She had been in Dresden and the little town of Sevres, and believed tho afflatus had come to her and that she was a poet in china. And Natalie struck her from the first as being an ideal subject for illustration.

She worked up to Natalie before she made a direct attack on her. Then she ordered a gorgeous altar cloth, to have put which into the church would have raised a schism. When she ordered that cloth she took off Natalie’shead—sketched it, you know. When the cloth was finished and she made it into an afghan for her sister Margaret’s baby coach, she had stolen Natalie's arms, her hands, her hair, one eye—indeed, she might have opened a museum of comparative anatomy in a little while. And all because she designed a coup, no less than an ex'quisite plaque with Natalie upon it, in the style of Watteau and Poisson, the subject, “Ariadno Deserted by Perseus.” No wonder she ordered so many embroideries, she wanted so many unconscious sittings from the girl, and a model is always best, thought she, when she does not know she is posing. ■ She had Natalie come to her house before the girl’s clothes were at their shabbiest, and John Abington, Mrs. Clayton’B brother, saw the little thing and laughed long and heartily, and went to Margaret and the rest and told them Amelia’s secret, and so saved the family traditions for sanity. “And what a beauty the girl is!” thought John Abington. “A Dresden sheperdess, indeed. I never thought Amelia had good taste before.” The plaque went on and so did the rent for Natalie’s flat, and so did Natalie’s healthy young appetite and her power for wearing out clothing, until at last the kerchief was all the work she had, and the plaque was nearly finished But, then, this was the climax, and, as everybody knows, after a climax things can only be worse or better, never as they were before. Natalie picked up the kerchief one clay and set about working a daisy in it. All at once a diamond drop of'dewlayin the heart of the daisy—a tear. The sun touched the dewdrop and flashed up to Cachette’s cage, and the bird began to shriek—to sing heavenly, Natalie would have said. Whereupon up jumped Natalie, a second dewdrop on her lily cheek. “Quel est le prix du loyer!” she said. (What is the rent!) I will soften the heart of my landlord, who admired Cachette only yesterday!” For the owner of the f[at had paid a domiciliary visit to his tenants the day before, and had snapped his finger at the bird for making so much noise, called Natalie “Miss Bunker” and had afterward given the agent a piece of his mind for renting an apartment to a lone girl and letting her 'get in arrears for rent at that* .* -

“My other tenants aro ladies and gentlemen,"he sidd, “and I won’t have it. Bounce her next week.”

.But how was Natalie to know any thing of this? \ “Ce paavro Cachette!” (poor Cachette). she said. :' .b ■

Cachette put his head to one side and poured out a flood of melody.. Natali.) took him from his cage and held him up to her cheek. ,

“Adieu, Cachettel" she Baid. “Tboit art air that is loft. But the landlord must be softened—did be not admire thy song yesterday? He may give me time in which to pay my rent.” Sbe plucked a long single feather from the wing of the bird and dropped it into her basket among the flosses and silver threads with which she was embroidering her daisies. Still wavering, loth to let it go, she kept the little feathered thing in her hand off and on till evening. Then with a great wrench and a throb in her throat she finally decided. She put Cadiiette into his cage, threw on her hat, and cage in hand went forth to the brown stone apogee of Mr. Cumbersome Brownjfher landlord. And now let Melnotneno take her nup. HI.

“Rats!” snarled Mr. Cumbersome Brown, his head padded in raw cotton, for he bad caught cold in bis drufty flats yesterday, though he would not have owned that an ounce of air ever entered those buildings without a permit from thetenants. He had been subject to neuralgia ever since he stopped legitimate business and took to building flats. ,

“Rats!” said he on receipt of Cachette. “I’ve heard of French coquetting before, but this lays oyer : it all. But Miss Bunker is not in it—ont she goes next week. Scotts! I believe the bird is French, too, the way it winks with, its eyes.” ■ • , -V. _ ■.

(To be contihued ih oar»est,)„ A