The Velvet Hand

THE VIPER-4

"Voilà! Voilà! Caught over the shoulders in two points and hanging perfectly straight but for a slight fullness under the breast and my three wrinkles across the abdomen. Behold, Madame!"

Indeed, in two minutes there hung the glorious evening gown complete. Absolutely simple, yet stamped with the genius of Craqui.

"With that you may wear your pearls," he said. "But nothing else. Nothing in your beautiful hair. Part your hair not quite in the middle, draw it back loosely and give it a careless twist at the back as you might before going to the bath. That is the mode for you, Madame: disdainful simplicity!"

"I have no pearls," she said drily.

"Then get some. Dusky pearls. Not a long string. If they hang below the décollettage the effect is ruined. Twenty-six inches; no more; no less!"

"Dear sir, how husbands must hate you!" murmured Mme Storey.

He held an expressive shrug.

I was not overlooked. I too, was endowed with a luscious evening gown in the "stove-pipe silhouette." M. Craqui insisted that it must be made up in magenta velvet. Fancy red-haired me in magenta! But he was right, as it proved. The only trouble with the gown when I got it was that it made me look too fine for my humble station. M. Craqui besought me to have my straight hair bobbed, and worn clinging to the skull in the manner of a lad of the Fifteenth Century. I declined, gasping. Bella Brickley of East Seventeenth Street, N.Y., was unable to project herself that far back!

Mme Storey wanted clothes, but she had, as well, another object in visiting Craqui's that morning. At a certain stage in the proceedings she said with an aggrieved air:

"These are all very pretty, but you show me nothing to compare with the stunning designs you have created for Madame Eben Smith."

M. Craqui made great play with uplifted palms and raised eyebrows. "But that would be a sacrilege, dear Madame!"

Mme Storey affected to misunderstand him. "Am I not, then, worthy of your best?"

I thought M. Craqui would have a fit in his efforts to explain. "Non! Non! Non! Non! In dressing you I am forced to humble myself, Madame. I cannot adorn you! In a jute slip you would outshine any woman who came near you!"

"Ah, Craqui is not Craqui for nothing!" murmured Mme Storey, smiling at me.

"Now this Mrs. Smit'," he went on, "her figure is well enough, and her face has no positive blemishes, but she is just woman. One can take her like clay and mould her to any design. I do not deny that in Mrs. Smit' I have found an opportunity. I have never had a customer so ductile, so complaisant. Most women have notions about dressing themselves. Or if not their range is very limited. But Mrs. Smit' is willing to be anything. I can create her afresh each day, according to my mood. Decidedly, an opportunity. Moreover, she carries my designs into places where my mannequins cannot go. Oh, an advertisement magnificent, Madame."

"They say she's a strange woman," remarked Mme Storey. "Inscrutable."

He shrugged. "That inscrutability may hide anything or nothing," he said. "She comes here; she says nothing at all. She has a mysterious air—very good; that is valuable to me; I exploit it. My little mannequins, of course, wear their little hearts outside like breast pins."

"What is her idea?"

"She aspires to become the most-talked-of woman in Paris."

"She is very rich I suppose?"

M. Craqui shrugged in a different manner. He had a whole repertoire of shrugs. "I do not know. She pays her bills."

"You must know something about her."

"Nothing whatever, dear Madame. She walked into my shop one day. The only thing remarkable about her was that she insisted on seeing me. There she sat. In the end I had to go to her in order to get rid of her. She says she is a widow. I should have called her a mature mademoiselle. Certainly she is the least married married woman I have observed. Possibly her husband was very old."

"Did you not ask for references?"

"Oh, her bankers. The Crédit Foncier. They reported merely that her account was satisfactory to them."

Mme Storey allowed the subject to drop, and the exhibition of dresses went on.

As we drove away from the shop I said: "I am prepared to believe now that there is something in Mrs. Greenfield's story. The ex-secretary could scarcely have obtained money enough to patronize Craqui except by criminal means."

But Mme Storey put her head on one side dubiously. "Not quite yet, Bella. We know she had ten thousand dollars. She may even have had more, honestly obtained. Ten thousand dollars will buy a lot of French francs at the present rate of exchange. She may be blowing in the whole in one magnificent gesture.... Still, it is rather significant she should choose a French banker—an American woman, speaking no French."

IVI don't wonder that Americans love Paris; the wonder is they don't all fly there as soon as they have made their pile. The dinner party at Mrs. Charlton's passed off with éclat—something that we have not in America any more than we have a word for it. Not only was everything expensive, but there was a certain stimulus in the air. The diners were roused out of themselves. They talked.

The company dispersed shortly before eleven, leaving us three women to go on to the Jockey with General le Boutillier. He, I need only say, was an old gentleman with nothing whatever to him, but most distinguished to look at.

I was disappointed in my first glimpse of the Jockey, which Mrs. Charlton had assured us was the resort of resorts in Paris and very difficult to get into. Exactly like places of the sort in Greenwich Village. A dingy room with chairs and tables around the walls, and a square of linoleum in the centre to dance on. The drabness of the walls was relieved by a few startling post-cubist paintings. There was a subtle difference, though: the difference between an original and a copy. In Paris a Bohemian has a recognized place in the scheme of things and bears himself with a corresponding assurance. In New York the poor things have to fight against an inferiority complex.

There was one very palpable difference in the Jockey which made all the difference in the world: a flourishing bar in the corner served by American bartenders. How real they looked! In another corner there was a jazz band, and that was American, too.

The types were as those of the Village only more so. More complete and finished than we can produce. And yet I don't know. I was amused to discover that the most picturesque and Vie de Bohèmish of them invariably turned out to be Americans. For example, there was a glorious young fellow with a black slouch hat and a flaming red beard. (How we sensible souls do love a swaggering pose!) They told me he was the American Bolshevist. Splendid to look at. But when he removed the slouch hat I saw that his hair was growing thin on top, and I felt rather let down.

At eleven, when we arrived, the place was empty; at midnight every table save the one next to us was filled. I was dizzied by the number of celebrities that were pointed out to me; Lady Evelyn Estabrook, the English Sappho; Boué Say, the cubist photographer; Otile Exeideuil, the inventor of Ga-Ga, which is not baby talk but a serious movement in art, etc., etc. In addition to the habitués there was a sprinkling of rich American tourists. I observed that the attention of these was unobtrusively called to the pictures, and no doubt appointments were made to visit studios next day. Well, artists must live.

There was one feature of artist life that had not altered. The celebrated photographer Boué Say, who it appeared was late of Union Square, was talking to Mme Storey, and that brought next to me his charming little companion who had no other name but Toto. I was half scandalized, half thrilled. Really, quite a nice little thing. She had no English except a few naughty phrases that she got off with innocent gusto. But I made out to talk to her in my French. Toto, however, preferred to express herself in the universal language of making faces. Enough to make you die! Times have changed! Those great ladies Mme Storey and Mrs. Wynn Charlton talked to Toto as unaffectedly as they might to any pretty child, and Toto was not in the least abashed by them.

In an interval of the music we heard an uproar of talk and laughter on the pavement outside as a new crowd discharged themselves from taxis. It was like a fanfare off scene. The door was banged open and a half dozen men and women burst in. As soon as they were in they began to ask each other loudly: "Where's Mrs. Smith? Where's Mrs. Smith?" Whereupon they all turned around and looked through the door again. I never saw an entrance better stage-managed. She entered quietly, last and alone, her noisy companions falling back to give her passage.

Well, there she was! A little thing, smaller than me; not beautiful, not young, not even clever, they said, but the sensation of artistic Paris. To me she seemed the very incarnation of Paris, though I knew she had but lately stepped ashore from a transatlantic liner. She was all wrapped up in a cloak of rosy fur, flamingo colour. Who ever heard of rosy fur before? But why not? Above this pink cloud she seemed all eyes—-dark caverns in which gleamed a pair of cold and watchful serpents. Her strange parti-coloured hair was drawn across her forehead in a wide band. A curiously wrought ornament of pink jade stuck out from her head at an angle. Her face was all deathly pale; her mouth a cold red splotch. Clearly the aim of this make-up was not to copy nature, but to set up a new criterion.

She allowed the rosy wrap to fall into the arms of a cavalier, and a little sound of astonishment escaped the beholders. Mrs. Smith was wearing a high-waisted dress! The only high-waisted dress that had been put on in Paris that night I am sure. How original of Craqui! It covered her entire too, with sleeves to her wrists, and a yoke that rose almost to her neck. It was made of some sheer white material embroidered with big pale pink dots, and was tied behind with an exaggerated thin wide bow with uneven ends, a Craqui touch.

Of course! Daring effects not being capable of supplying any further thrills, Craqui with one step had gone back to the prim. It was a humorous rendering of the Kate Greenaway period. Highly sophisticated primness. Around her pretty neck Mrs. Smith was wearing a glorious circlet of diamonds: twenty great flashing stones in an invisible setting.

A hint of grimness appeared in Mme Storey's eyes as she marked the diamonds, and I read her thought. Had an old man been murdered for those bits of carbon?

Mrs. Smith and her companions made their way to the table next to ours. I took note of the famous walk. It did have the effect of lending the little woman a sort of majesty. While the others talked back and forth, she sat facing the dancing floor like a sphinx. Nothing more than her tinted eyelids moved. She was like an expensive mechanical doll in the window of a toy shop at Christmas. Quite inhuman. One felt sorry for her. That was supposed to be a scene of gaiety, and she was not gay. On the other hand, there was neither pain nor ennui in the cold gray eyes. There was no expression whatever. All a pose, no doubt, but what on earth was the good of a pose that laid such a painful stricture on the natural motions?