Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels. Bryce Charles
at first sight particularly prepossessing. The contour of it was unusually pointed, though the chin receded so much that it could hardly be said to exhibit a point. The mouth was weak and large and always half open, so that the teeth, stained brown by the smoking of continuous cigarettes, were not completely hidden when he talked under the straggling little moustache, the end of which he had an unpleasant habit of chewing. The nose was prominent and looked too large for the rest of his face, the eyes, dark and deep-set, seemed to flash with unsuspected fires when talk turned on a subject that interested him. It was they that redeemed the whole man from total insignificance. They were the eyes of an enthusiast, almost of a fanatic. He did not talk much, but seemed content to devour the food set before him and to gaze untiringly at Julie who sat opposite him at the small square table.
Julie was a very good-looking girl in her way, which was not at all an English way, although the English language came more naturally to her lips than her mother tongue. To tell the truth, she was not very proficient in that, her mother and father having both found it easier, after she began to go to school, to talk to her in broken English. Indeed, after twenty years or so of residence in London that language became as natural to them as their own tongue, and Madame Querterot’s French had by now grown quite as anglicised as that of many linguists in her adopted country. She found, however, that many of her customers preferred her to talk in broken English; they liked to feel that here was some one come straight from the gay city to do their pleasure.
Her daughter inherited her mother’s oval face and arched eyebrows, but there the likeness ceased. Julie was tall while Madame Querterot was short; she was dark, while her mother was fair, and of a fairness that owed nothing to art. Julie had a straight, short nose and a little rosebud of a mouth, her skin was dark but glowing with health, and the brown eyes, set far apart under the low brow, had a wide-open look of sorrowful surprise as if she found herself in a world that failed continually to come up to her expectations. Bert, it was plain to see, found all this very much to his liking, and was so taken up with the contemplation of it that a great deal of Madame Querterot’s conversation fell unheeded on his ears, and his answers, when he made any, were for the most part quite irrelevant.
Madame Querterot had by this time completely recovered her good temper, or at all events displayed the amiability habitual to her in intercourse with strangers. She prattled away about the weather, the letter she had that day received from her relations in Paris, asked about Bert’s work, and showed, and possibly felt, great interest in his meagre replies. Presently she began to talk about the occupation of her own day.
“There is an old lady whom I visit for the massage,” she said, “who would make you laugh to see. She is ugly, she is fat, she has the complexion of a turkey! Yet there is no one so anxious as she to become young again. Was she ever beautiful? I do not know; but it is certain that she will not be so again. Every day I find her with a mirror in her hand and every day as I leave her she takes it up again to see if there is any improvement. For all I know she sits like that, gazing at her unsympathetic reflection till the next day when I come once more.”
Madame Querterot paused and took a draught of her lemonade.
“A little more sugar, Julie, my cherished, and it would be better still,” she said. “In this country sugar is less dear and you are unnecessarily careful of it. If we were in France I would not say so; there, there are impôts. But this, one must admit it, is the cheapest place one can live in. That is why one finds here so many Jews. Bah! the Jews! Why does one suffer them? In England as in France one sees nothing else; but even more in England since l’affaire Dreyfus. There is one lady to whom I go daily who would gladly live in France, I think, if it had not become less disagreeable for her race here since that business. But perhaps it is not only on that account that she stays here, now that I reflect. She is not one of those who amuse themselves well in a republic.”
“How is that, mother?” asked Julie without much interest, while their guest, for his part, merely grunted indifferently.
“She is more than a Royalist,” said Madame Querterot; “she loves to see a head which knows how it feels to wear a crown. She goes every day to watch the Queen drive through the park. Mon Dieu! I think she lives only for that. To-day a Prince passed below her window, and as chance had it he looked up at her as he went. She was mad with joy; one would have said it was the happiest hour of her existence. She said nothing, but I have my eyes! And it is a woman who has everything to make her enjoy life. She is not bad-looking, not at all bad-looking; for a Jewess, even handsome; she is still young, and rich. Oh, but rich!”
Madame Querterot put down her knife and fork and raised both hands in the air to convey the extent of the wealth enjoyed by the lucky Jewess.
For the first time Bert displayed some interest in the conversation, or monologue, as one might more properly call it.
“It’s disgraceful,” he said, “it ought to be put a stop to. These people! They suck the blood of the poor!”
“The Jews, yes; it is their métier,” agreed Madame Querterot.
“I don’t refer to the Jew especially. What I’m alluding to at the present moment is all these useless rich folk. The drones of the hive, as you may say. These bloated capitalists who occupy the land that ought by rights to jolly well belong to the people. They’d better look out for themselves, I can tell them. There’s a day coming when society won’t stand it any longer. In other words, we’re going to drive them out. Tax them out of their very existence. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
Bert glared triumphantly round as he brought his hand down on the table with a conclusive emphasis which made the glasses on the table jump nervously.
“This Mrs. Vanderstein of whom I speak,” resumed Madame Querterot composedly, “has no land so far as I know. She has only a house in London. But she is rich all the same. One sees it at each step. In the house, what luxury! Such pictures! such furniture! such flowers! And automobiles, and boxes at the opera! Such dresses! And above all, such jewels! Oh, she is very rich, that one.”
“It’s all the same,” declared Bert, “whether she spends her money on land, or on clothes, or what not. The point I want to impress on you is that she does spend it, and that while she’s living on the fat of the land the rest of us may starve!”
He helped himself as he spoke to another plateful of œufs à la neige.
Julie watched him, the shadow of a smile playing about her mouth.
“Have you seen this lady’s jewels, mother?” she asked. “I adore precious stones.”
“I have seen some of them,” said her mother. “To-night her maid brought to her a necklace and bracelets of diamonds, besides a coiffure and rings of great beauty, no doubt without price. But she sent them away again, saying that she would wear others. Those I did not see, but it is certain that she has many, and all wonderful. Every day she wears different ones and, constantly, a string of enormous pearls. Without those last I have never seen her. They are as large as marbles and, to tell the truth, not much more pretty, for my taste. When I tell you that she employs a night watchman, whose sole duty is to patrol the house every night, you will understand that the value of what it contains must be large.”
“That’s just what these capitalists do,” cried Bert excitedly. “They lock away thousands of pounds like that when the money ought to be out in the world paying just and equal wages. I should like to see it made a criminal offence to wear jewellery.”
“But what would happen to the people who make it?” asked Julie. “They would all lose their means of earning a livelihood, is it not so? What would the pearl fisher do, or those who dig precious stones out of the earth? And the polishers and setters? Every industry has a host depending on it for a demand for its labour.”
“There would be less need for labour,” said Bert more gently, as was always the case when he spoke to her, “if the money was taken from the capitalists and divided among the people.”
“Still – ” objected Julie again.
Madame Querterot, however, did not propose to listen to an argument on the benefits to be expected from Socialism; she had frequently heard all that Bert had to say on