The Only Poet (17 page)

Ruth sat up. ‘It isn't – it isn't – anything horrid?' she faltered. There was a pale ghost of a shrieking quality in her voice, just the most ladylike version of a trace of hysteria, which made one remember that in her condition she oughtn't to be over-excited.

‘It's nothing at all,' said Robin kindly; ‘but it seems there's some bills you've forgotten to settle in Paris, and these are some
huissiers,
some debt collectors, that you've got to see about it. Don't be frightened. I dare say it's all a mistake. Come along, girls, and we'll get it over.'

We found Issy in one of the smaller salons leading out of the lounge, an Olympian apartment with marble pillars, and a ceiling on which some dozen goddesses as they were conceived by mural artists in the '80s were thrusting robust ankles through clouds – insurance refused because subjected to unreasonable strain – and offering bosoms the size of public libraries to the embraces of hundred-pound Cupids, and a vast circular table round which were arranged six enormous chairs, upholstered in purple plush, each having the air of being the wealthy widow of a prominent member of the furniture world.

Issy, who looked remarkably undersized in these surroundings, was working his way round the table, clinging to the back of one chair after another, while he attempted to express his opinion of the two gentlemen who waited for us under a colossal mantelpiece, doubtless the tomb of a specially eminent chef, which took up almost one whole wall of the room. He would have succeeded, for he seemed to have a prettier gift of language than I had supposed from seeing him in his milder moments, had it not been for this tendency of his breath and tongue to fail him and his words.

I admit I regretted it; for the gentlemen were not nice. I cannot describe them adequately. They seemed to be relevant to all the more shabby and less pleasing manifestations of French bureaucracy; or rather, to put it more justly, people who wear uniforms in France. I could imagine that their mothers were ticket collectors on the Paris, Méditerranée et Lyons Railway; that their fathers were postmen notorious for their dilatoriness. I felt that the peculiarly offensive tin trumpets which give the trains the signal to start in small French railroad stations played an important part in the courting of these pairs; gave, no doubt, the coy female warning of her lover's approach.

To the sound of that trumpet they had dedicated their children to the sacred duty of annoying the public. These gentlemen were being faithful to that dedication, to that call of the blood. They were standing drawn up to their full height; they were feeling worthy of the mantelpiece. They bowed towards the ladies repeatedly, with a juicy fervour.

‘I wanted to be taught how to use my hands,' said Issy. ‘God knows I wanted to be taught how to use my hands, from the time I was a small boy, but my poor mother – You know what women are.' His speech left him again.

‘Do you understand French?' said Robin to Ruth.

‘I do and I don't,' she answered softly.

‘You had better read the writ to the lady then,' Robin said to the debt collector.

The one with the pomaded beard stepped forward. He looked round with the expression of a prize bull and, just to put us at our ease, remarked in a rich baritone,
‘Moi, c'est la loi,'
and began to read a list of debts that about ten Paris tradesmen had sworn in the court of Monte Carlo that Ruth owed them.

I listened in amazement. I had been under the impression that Ruth never ran up bills. I might say, even, that I knew she did not, because once or twice I had been, on her recommendation, to tailors and milliners, and when they heard her name they gave me credit with a readiness that showed they had never lost a penny through her. But this was a formidable list. It amounted to a vast sum, and it comprised such odd items for her to have defaulted. Not only two years' dressmaking bills from two of the most expensive houses but nearly the whole of the purchase price of the villa at Auteuil.

‘Oh, won't you none of you tell me what it's all about?' whimpered Issy.

We were all so thralled by the recital that we turned round and sh-sh-ed him.

He clung to one of the pillars and bubbled.

Some pictures bought from the best modern art dealers in Paris, which showed that Ruth knew a great deal more about painting than I had suspected. Who had told her it was good business to buy Derains and Utrillos? A good deal of antique furniture that had been shipped to New York last fall, and some that had gone to Auteuil. And some Persian rugs that must, from the price, have been very, very fine indeed.

The total was eighteen hundred thousand francs. We all were silent.

‘How much do they want?' screamed Issy suddenly.

We turned to him, stared at him in sympathy, and having all fallen into the habit of thinking in French while the
huissier
was reading, we shouted, in unison, ‘
Un
million huit cent mille francs.'

‘I said how much do they want.'

We were silent in amazement, then chanted in unison again:
‘Un million huit cent mille francs
.'

He buried his head in his hands. Then made one more despairing effort: ‘Will you tell me how much –'

It dawned on us that he did not understand French: ‘Oh! Eighteen hundred thousand francs!'

Having gratified his curiosity, we turned away as if we had done him a good turn.

‘Do you owe all that?' asked Sheila of Ruth, with the solemn admiration that an extravagant woman feels for a very extravagant woman.

‘Well,' said Ruth, ever so faint and high, ‘maybe I do.'

We all looked at her in amazement. It was a new light on the girl.

Then we all swung round at a howl from Issy. With a pencil in his hand, he was staggering back from the column on which he had been scribbling calculations.

Ruth detached herself from the group like a greyhound and was beside him in a flick of the eye. She put a loving arm round his shoulders, took the pencil from his hands and seemed to revise the calculations. I am sure I heard her say, ‘Now, sweetie, you always get that wrong. You have to cross off two zeros, not one.' And I am almost certain I also heard her say, ‘That makes it seventy-two hundred dollars.' Which is not true. Nothing in the world will make eighteen hundred thousand francs at the current rate of exchange anything but seventy-two thousand dollars. She drew him back into our group.

‘Do you owe all that, honey?' asked Issy.

She shook her head. ‘I guess I haven't kept one single receipt of the whole lot,' she said, and she began to weep very softly – tears that reminded him that she was his woman, that she was soon to be the mother of his child. ‘But I want it settled. I don't like this, Issy!' She looked with doe-like eyes at the
huissiers.
‘What do they want us to do?'

Issy stepped in front of her. ‘Here you, young fellow,' he said to Robin, ‘do they want her to go to prison? Because here I am.'

‘Well, they don't quite want that,' answered Robin. ‘They want the money.'

‘Now?'

‘At once. That's the point of this process. For all they know, you might get away, you know.'

‘But they can't have it! I tell you, man, I haven't got it! I've just enough to pay my bill here. I sent a banker's draft over to Ruth's Paris bank account and it will only just be paid in. In fact I don't understand all this business, but Ruthie says it can't be paid till I get there next week, because there's all this foolery of identification. Poor Ruthie wouldn't have a letter of credit, because she got nervous in case somebody slugged me for it.'

Ruth shuddered at the recollection of those fears and cast herself into his arms. ‘Then they'll seize your luggage.'

‘My luggage! For a debt they haven't proved? For a debt Ruthie paid but didn't keep the receipt for?'

‘Oh, I do owe some of it, Issy darling.'

‘Honey, I won't have it!'

‘Aow!' Ruth had wrested herself from his arms and given the shrillest yet the most refined scream imaginable. ‘You've forgotten!'

‘Forgotten what?'

‘Our luggage got left behind at Ventimiglia by mistake. It's still in Italy! Don't you remember how Mary made that silly mistake so that it went into the left luggage room instead of our train? And I was sending a courier back for it today.'

‘Why, sure I –'

‘We haven't anything except – oh, darling, my jewels!'

She looked into his eyes and did not take them from his, though her lips trembled, when for a second his chubby little face looked grey and tired, as if he had been reminded of a family disgrace. Then she began to cry again, those heart-melting tears that reminded him of her claim on him, and his child's claim.

‘Oh, let's get through with this! I always told you that my jewels were faked up old things. I guess they're not worth as much as that –'

‘Not worth as much as that?' the little man echoed her, wistfully, hopefully.

‘Not worth half as much as that, but they've been so mean putting these men on me, who never owed a cent in my life, that I guess they can stand the loss. Let me give them the jewels and send them away.' She broke into terrible primitive sobs. ‘It isn't fair to me to have me standing talking to this kind of men. Why, they've come from the police! They're all dirty from handling criminals! I'm frightened, Issy! I feel they'll make a criminal of me! I feel they'll drag me off to prison! It isn't good for my baby! Give them my jewels and send them away!'

At this point a waiter, who must have been listening at the door, rushed in, and taking his stand in front of Ruth in an attitude of defence such as seen in Greek statuary, cried,
‘Le soleil est couché!'

The assistant manager, who had been standing behind
one
of the pillars, stepped forward and said,
‘Ah, c'est vrai, le soleil est couché.'

Robin de Cambremer turned to us, and with an air of warmly congratulating himself and us, exclaimed,
‘Le soleil est couché!'

The two debt collectors turned to each other and remarked gloomily:
‘Piste, le soleil est couché!'

‘What are they saying?' asked Issy.

‘They're saying the sun has set.'

‘Is that what that waiter fellow yelled when he came dashing into the room?'

‘Yes.'

‘He said the sun was set?'

‘Yes.'

‘And that's what all the rest of them are saying?'

‘Yes.'

He disengaged Ruth from his arms and made her stand by herself. ‘What makes you raise Cain to have your child born in a country where the people are such darned fools that they burst into a room where people are talking important business to tell them that the sun has set? If we really got down to brass tacks, I suppose they would burst in to tell us that broccoli had just come in season.'

‘Well, it is rather important,' said Robin. ‘You see, in the principality of Monaco, where we are at the moment, no debt collector can do his work between sunset and sunrise.'

‘Oh, I see, I see!' breathed Issy, and he took Ruth back to his arms. There immediately she began to weep again, and say, ‘Tell them to come back as early as they like in the morning and take my jewels,' to which he answered, ‘Sure, honey. Anything you say, honey. Only don't cry, honey.' And so we left them.

And that would have been the end of the story, so far as I would have known it, if Sheila had not had the temperament of a natural lawbreaker, and had not grown bright and rather restless after dinner.

‘I hate to think of that poor little thing giving up her jewels,' she said, as we sat round the fire, safe in Cap Martin, which is over the frontier in France.

‘She didn't seem to mind,' I said.

‘Of course she minded. Who wouldn't? Besides, if she says she's paid some and hasn't kept the receipts, it's outrageous. And her jewels are worth far more – far more.'

‘Are they?'

She nodded. ‘Half as much again if I know anything about jewels at all.' For a moment she was still. Then her shoe began to tap the ground. ‘Besides, it's a disgraceful law. That a firm should have the right to issue a writ by simply alleging a debt to a magistrate without having to inform the other people and giving them a chance to disprove it! It's outrageous.' And a little later: ‘And I hate to think of her losing any of her lovely jewels to those
huissiers.
For they get 10 per cent, you know, of all the debts they collect.'

In the end she evolved a plan. It depended on a royal personage who lived in the very next villa. His automobile would never be stopped as it crossed the frontier of Monaco. So if he sent the automobile into Monaco and it called at the Hôtel de Paris and picked up Issy and Ruth no power could prevent them from crossing the frontier back into France and they could settle down in a hotel at Mentone for the night, proceed by motorboat to Cap Ferrat, and let the French tradesmen justify their claims according to the more formal methods of the French courts.

The idea struck us as a good joke splendidly in the Phillips Oppenheim manner. We got our evening wraps and strolled over to the royal personage's villa. He found the idea as entertaining as we did. We got a little excited over it sitting on the floor in front of his great wood fire on the deep white polar bear rugs with his Alsatians nuzzling us with their ice-cold black noses and little glasses of vodka in our hands. It was certainly fun to talk about; and rather too late Robin and I found that Sheila and the royal personage were taking it seriously. Finally we got in his automobile and went back to Monaco.

I reflected that it was because he had taken this sort of plan seriously that he was living in Cap Martin instead of the kingdom to which he was born. Issy, we were told, had gone out for a stroll. Ruth was in bed, but she telephoned down that she would be glad to see us.