A SHORT STORY.

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 70, 21 February 1918, Page 4

A SHORT STORY.

(Iri Thrkf. Parts.) (All Rights Reserved.) BEAUTIFUL JACONETTE. BY CLIVE HOLLAND. Author of "My Japanese Wife," "An Egyptian Coquette," "The Seed of the Poppy," "Marcelle of the Latin Quarter," etc. PART I. All the habitues of the old Cafe des Lilas, which stands just beyond Fremiet's Fountain at the top of the Boulevard St. Michel opposite Bullier, called her Jacouete, and none seemed to know her other name, if she had one. ' Jaconette was young, pretty, and charming, and it is needless to saythat she had many friends and admirers, not only among the habitues of the Cafe des Lilas, but also down at "Colorossi's in the Rue de la Grande Chaumiere, where she posed. Jaconette seemed like some gay butterfly let out upon the world of the Quartier Latin when she entered the smoke-begrimed room of the old Cafe des Lilas, which its frequenters loved so well, and for them had so many tragic, comic, and interesting meraormies.

Jaconette, we have said, was young. At the time she got to know John Bcttany, the young poet-painter of whom Colorossi Pere thought so much, and from whom great things were expected, she was hardly twenty, although she looked more. But the Quartier is a school in which experience of life is soon gained, and with experience often comes the look of age, even upon young faces.

t (Tradition said that Jaconette had come a few years before from a little Normandy village on the coast near Cancale. And some of the blue of the sea which washes that favoured coast seemed to have crept into her jeyeso. as did also some of. the sunshine appear to have entangled itself in her brown hair.

\ As Jules la Fontaine said one day as he, Bettany, and little Giles Smethwick. the American, sat smoking, drinking coffee, and discussing Jaconette, after. a hard morning's work down at Colorrossi's, "she was more than a peasant and less than a lady." And perhaps this strange characteristic of Jaconette's gave her half her charm.

I It was not easy to shock Jaconette; and she would talk of any subject that the mind of the student could invent—and the inventions sometimes were very daring—and yet never did coarseness creep info Eer eyes or speech.

| She was so different from the other girls of the Quartier. Marie Dercourt, for instance, who with a good heart beating Beneath her bodice, was yet coarse enough to shock at any rate a nouvcau, and to cause even the hardened sinner amongst the habitues of the Cafe des Lilas of the Cafe d'Harcourt further down the Boulevard qualms of apprehension when she talked in mixed society.

, So many would have been friends with Jaconette, but although when the daily sitting- was finished at ColorosBi's, or she had spare time upon her hands, she was willing to pose for anyone whom she liked, and who could paint, no one as yet had captured her affections. And so she lived alone in her little fifth-floor mansarde, situated in one of the crooked little streets which run out of the Rue de Seine. , If she favoured anyone, it was admitted by most of the little group of artistic souls, which included Jules la Fontaine, Giles Methwick, Phillipe Delapre, the journalist, and Henry Comstock, an American medical student, that the lucky fellow was Bettany. There was something about Bettany that would naturally take the fancy of women. He was not exactly handsome; but in his thin face, with its clear-cut features, and his deep, unfathomable, grey- blue eyes, there lurked just that element of mystery that would stir the curiosity of a woman and probably lead on to love. Then he was blessed with a s;ngu'atly flexible voice, which took on at times, when he was in earnest conversation, a musical cadence, which, a 3 Jaconette had on ce said, "Went right to the heart." i When first Jaccnette's liking for Bettany became apparent, the matter was freely discussed in that special far corner of the Cafe des Lilas, away from the billiard tables, and near the windows which opened out on to the "terrasse,"' where stood the famous oleanders in green tubs. The conclusions arrived at were two. Firstly, that Bettany was a lucky fellow; and, secondly, that Jaconette was throwing herself away. 1 Marie Dercourt, who at five-and-twenty had played the game of life in the Quartier with boldness, though with varying success, who had at one time possessed a fiat of four rooms in a huge block along- the new Boulevard Raspail, and at another had occupied a single tiny room in a byStreet half way down the toilsomely long Rue de Vaugirad, said: "Jaconette is a fool. She is too pretty for a poet, whose dreams seldom materialise into twenty-franc pieces, and who probably will soon tire of her, as poets usually do."

; But those who knew Jaconette 'did not believe it was possible for anyone ,to tire of her, and thought that bold, handsome Marie Dercourt, might possibly be even jealous.

Few, however, realised that beneath the laughing face of Jaconette, all her gaiety and apparently butterfly ways, which, after all, were a great protection in a community where it was dangerous to be sad, possessed a depth of character that lifted betas far above the girls of the Quartier morally ns she was above most cf them by reason of physical charm. It was the custom of the little coteric which had named itself in satirical glee "The Liars," because, as Smethwick asserted, "they always spoke the truth," to meet every day, at the end of the seance at Colorossi's, where all of them save Cornstock and Dclapre worked. Generally Jaconette was there, the life and soul of the party, able to hold her own against the sometimes savagely jealous onslaught of the other girls, by reason of that strain of good breeding which seemed to have crept somehow into her peasant blood.

On a fine morning in June, just after the-excitement of th*- opening of the salon of the distribution of green tickets and the white, Jules la Fontaine, Smethwick, and Jaconette came along up the Boulevard to the rendezvous at the Cafe des Lilas. Jaconette looked charming in the sunlight She had a fresher natural color than most Frenchwomen, her sea-blue eyes were dancing with the joy of life, and in her hair still more sunbeams seemed to be entrapped than usual. Her frock, too, fitted her like that of a great lady, and her shoes were above reproach—a sure sign of thriftiness in a model; and if her cotton gloves were darned, the work was so neat that no one save a woman would have suspected the fact.' On her arm hung a pink cotton parasol, which gave just that delicate roseleaf tint to her face when she sheltered herself under it from the sunshine that Bettany had more than once declared was like nothing he had ever seen before, and had caused Smethwick to insist upon painting her so "en plein air" in a corner of the Luxembourg Gardens.

As the three crossed the carrefour and tlvey nodded to ■ftafame] who sat on her high stool at the receipt pf custom, and who knew almost everyone in the Quartier both by sight and name with the easy familiarity of those to whom the Cafe des Lilas had become a home and an anchorage. In the • far corner of the billiard room, the low ceiling of which was so begrimed with the smoke of many pipes of caporal that instead of reflecting it seemed to sop up the light on the brightest of summer days, all the other members of the little coterie were gathered save Bettany. When Jaconette appeared, all save Comstock hammered upon the top of the table, the marble of which was no longer white, but yellow and somewhat streaky from stains of coffee and much ingrained lead pencil from the many sketches that had been mado upon it.

"Jaconette," they called, "come here." "Sit next to me." "What will you have?" "It is my turn to pay for Jaconette," and other exclamations as they all rose and made, way for the girl to pass to the padded settle which ran along the wall. Jaconette smiled at them, but her eyes sought one who was not there. At last she said: "Where is Monsieur Bettany?" and all save Comstock laughed. Smethwick exclaimed: "Oh, Bettany is dreaming as usual. He will be here soon. Mademoiselle"— pinching her arm—you must not expect a poet to be punctual. Poets never are, and if they were, would probably not Be poets." (To be Continued.)