Apartment to let: long lease

SYLVIA LYON

A further adventure of Bianca, the Parisian Hedonist, with an American enamoured of a Chilean

"How do you do, Bianca," I greeted my friend at luncheon after my return from a long voyage. I peered curiously into her eyes, always a pleasant adventure, and found there something new. "I cannot quite describe this new expression in your face," I said. "What is it?"

"Espiègle is the word," Bianca supplied kindly. "No, I do not want a cocktail, thank you, not even tomato. I have a strange empty feeling in my estomac, due no doubt to some spiritual excitement. I have been living intensely, through other people, of course," she added with a sigh.

As soon as I had ordered lunch, I beseeched Bianca to tell me what was new in Paris, for my voyage had been a business trip, and although the business had been moderately good, I wanted to forget it.

"What is new? What do you think I am, anyhow, Santa Claus?" she demanded, to my astonishment. "My words, I have discovered, have value. And 'new in Paris' indeed! How parochial of you! It is a wonder you do not ask me what is new in the sixteenth arrondissement. I wish this celery didn't crackle so: oh for a soundless celery. As a matter of fact there is something new in the sixteenth arrondissement: a lot of apartment-to-let signs, because that is where nearly all the South Americans live, and because of the drop in the peso, most of them have returned to their own countries. Mentioning South Americans reminds me of a story I will eventually tell you, but it isn't news, strictly speaking."

"If you won't tell me any news," I said crossly, "why not give it to the papers?"

"That is what I've been doing," she exclaimed in a betrayed sort of voice. "For weeks I have been regaling one of these newly arrived, pseudo-helpless New York girls with low-down that she has been selling. But I have reached the limit. Just before you appeared I saw the King of Spain dash through the hall. 'That is the King of Spain,' I said. 'Thanks,' she accepted, 'I will give him a break, poor man. I will mention him in Variety.' " Bianca rolled her eyes in the horror of sacrilege.

"Now, now, Bianca," I soothed, "that girl is just crazy."

"Oh I know that," murmured Bianca, "but she gets paid for it. Of course," she added loftily, "I would not be a journalist for worlds. They think they are so habile trying to get things out of you by asking questions in a bored, indifferent way. I believe in being straightforward. For God's sake," she lowered a voice now filled with dread, "be very busy and talk. Here comes Captain Molyneux, and I owe him a bill. Captain, oh my Captain ! "

But Bianca as usual was dramatizing, which she so enjoys, for both debtor and creditor seemed to rise above the bitter facts of life. She herself interrupted our conversation to compliment Molyneux on some Fragonard drawings in his possession that she had lately seen at an exhibition.

"Look here, Bianca," I scolded a moment later, "you have a decidedly interesting life, but you don't make use of it. Why not put down your little encounters, adventures, sketches of your friends?"

"I cannot do it," she said nobly, "words of honour and all that. I am up to my neck with State Secrets, and most of the people I know are far too well-known," she added modestly. She laughed in irritating secrecy. "Anyhow, don't want to put them down," she declared shortly. "Want to put them across. Across this table." She smiled. "But now I will tell you a story, a story about my friend Stephen Oliver Breckenridge . . .

* "Stephen," she began, "is a lovable monster, who, in rather an adorable way, thoroughly lives up to his initials. Although he has lived in Paris for a long time, I only met him last year, at a very-young-South American teaparty. At nine o'clock—which is the hour when South American tea-parties break up because they have to wait for the .papas to come home from leaving their lady-friends, so the papas can know exactly whom their daughters are entertaining,—Stephen asked to take me home. We entered a car. 'My mother's,' he informed me, as though his mother's car was Notre Dame and therefore I was safe in it with such a dangerous man. 'When may I call upon you?'

"Before I had time to answer, he pleaded, 'Do let me call upon you right now: I find you so sympathique.' This quality enlarged in his eyes when I refused to have dinner. 'I am nearly forty,' he announced, 'and you are the first American girl I have ever met who says she isn't hungry even if she isn't.'

"When we sat in the hall of my hotel and I refused 'even a sandwich' he began to adore me. 'I want to tell you all about myself,' he smiled engagingly. I rather wanted to hear because his eyes slant upwards, but I didn't dream it would take until twelve o'clock.

"Then I went upstairs and told my mother about my new friend and how good he was to his mother. ('One night' he had told me, 'I was bringing my mother home from dinner at the uptown Prunier, and I said pointing to a bench in the Avenue Kleber, "Do you see that bench, Mother? I am going to jump over it to show you that your son is still in good training."' With that he jumped over the bench but by the time he had come to the surface of the Avenue Kleber he had broken both his arms.)

"My own mother said, 'You must not see this man again. To break one arm is perfectly normal, but there is something peculiar about a man who breaks both arms at once.'

"However I knew that I was not to be harmed by Stephen, because he was in love with Mary Alcorta, the best-looking girl in the Chilean colony. In fact, he was so in love with her that he even got up on Sunday mornings to attend mass in the Spanish chapel in the rue de la Pompe just to sit near her. He told me that her parents knew nothing of their friendship because she said they would never allow her to have a divorced man for a 'flirt.' But South American girls just must have their little mysteries. It is also a part of their upbringing to lie as often as possible during the month, so when they go to confession they will have plenty to tell the priest."

"Bianca," I interposed judicially, "how can you have such prejudices!"

"Prejudices, William?" she asked in a tone of affected offense. "Why the very lack of them is one thing I have in common with Roumanians. I maintain that Roumanians have no racial prejudices. They just naturally hate everybody, including Roumanians. Voila!" And she made a gesture with her hand that mistakenly brought the head waiter.

"I advised Stephen to have nothing to do with Chileans," said Bianca taking on a dowager air. "What happened served him right." She tapped with such loud and repeated vigour upon the table that only her young distinction saved me from embarrassment.

"Oh, I know what you're thinking," she pronounced with uncanny precision, "you are thinking of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, where the park guardians suspect Orlando of madness until they see her pearls . . .

"The Alcortas," she continued, "were then living in an apartment, and one day Stephen snaked in and sat talking with Mary on the stairs .leading to the flat above. Suddenly Madame Alcorta returned home and saw them, but as anybody could tell that Stephen is a gentleman, she thought she had met him before, especially as his hair is gray at the temples. But Stephen was very alarmed and sprang up saying to Mary's mother while pulling a card from an outside pocket, 'I have been sent by Maple and Company to see about the curtains.' His own mother happened to be having curtains made by Maple's and he had their card in his pocket. Of course he expected Madame Alcorta to say, 'But there is some mistake.' Instead she asked, 'Have you brought the samples with you?' Stephen answered quickly, 'No they got burned up, but I will take the measurements now and bring other samples tomorrow.'

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"The poor creature had to go all over the flat with Madame Alcorta while Mary went into her room to pray, and to give a hundred francs to her younger sister, Nena, so she would not tell on them.

"Stephen had to look wise and suggest colours and Madame Alcorta was rather impressed because he had no tape-measure on him.

"She began at once by insisting that he stay to tea so he cotdd meet her daughters. So he and Mary were introduced under rather agonizing circumstances.

"After he left, Stephen rushed down to Maple's and made them give him a job on the strength of the money his mother spends there. Mrs. Breckenridge is always having nervous breakdowns and having her house done over."

Bianca fluttered her eyelashes and leaned forward to ask: "William, did you have a pleasant voyage? Constantinople, wasn't it?"

"I forget," I said sincerely, "do go on."

"Well, if you insist. . . . Stephen finally told his mamma that after all he wanted to earn his own living because he was over forty and wanted to settle down and marry a nice girl again. His mother was pleased but alarmed. Mary's mother was wild and alarmed: when she learned that Stephen was a divorced man she immediately took Mary off to their chateau near Tours.

"Yesterday, William, yesterday Stephen came to see me. Ilis hair has grown quite white. 'I have something to tell you,' he said, 'it will only take a day or two. Mary wrote me from Tours that she was going to have a baby.'

" 'Imbecile,' I screamed.

" 'Who, me?' he asked.

" 'No, me,' I snapped. 'I never even suspected.'

"'As soon as I had read her letter,' Stephen said with tears in his eyes, 'I sent a message to Mary saying that

I wanted to see her parents so we could marry at once and that I was sure my mother would settle a good allowance on me . . .'

"Little Nena Alcorta met him beside a specially marked tree on the hanks of the Loire with a note that Stephen should come to the chateau. Nena looked very happy indeed as she now had something on her sister for the rest of her life.

"Stephen told me he aged ten years on his way to the Alcortas'. It was a hot dusty day and he walked in order to rehearse his conversation with her parents. But he never had it: they weren't there. He had to face, instead, her grandmother, which in a way was worse. He was so frightened and embarrassed that he started to cry. He did not dare ask to see Mary.

" 'Her parents know nothing of this,' Mary's grandmother said quite coolly. 'Our family physician has come down from Paris and says that Mary is not enceinte. Good-afternoon.'

"She rose majestically, and there was nothing for Stephen to do hut to return to Paris to tell me, and make me admire his suffering, his thwarted chivalry. But, William, I admire infinitely more the grandmother's strategy. It is evident even to a girl like myself that what with being strict Catholics and all that, the Alcortas would rather have a bastard in the family than Stephen. The family is returning to the nitrate fields of Chile."

"He never should have told you," I growled.

"I agree," said Bianca, "but you don't think I am telling you their real names, do you?"

At this moment an Englishwoman stopped at our table and asked Bianca if by any chance she knew of an apartment to let, somewhere in the Passy quarter, for a long lease.

"As a matter of fact I do," Bianca replied, "it belongs to the . . ." and she stopped dead short and looking past me, blushed. "I will ring you up and give you the name and address sometime this evening," she said.