Martha in Paris Read Online Free PDF

over from England to make a home for him.—Martha munched at her long half-loaf rather faster and ceased to listen. (It was an exceptionally toothsome half-loaf: crisply browned, with poppy-seeds on top, also the poppy-seeds made quite interesting patterns.) But obviously Eric Taylor told her a good deal more about himself, since when he at last rose to go he said what a jolly talk they’d had.
    â€œPerhaps we’ll see each other again?” he suggested.
    â€œIf you keep on coming here,” said Martha gloomily.
    3
    Nothing on the face of it could have been less promising. But Eric Taylor had already projected upon Martha an ideal image: that of a sweet young English girl all by herself in Paris.
    He needed to meet one badly. It was understandable. His mother, in addition to making a home for him, had made him a very nice circle of friends. Regularly each Saturday evening they played bridge with the English chemist and his wife, and on Wednesday evenings with two very nice women who ran the English library, and on Sundays, after the Anglican service, often stood chatting with quite a party of nice English friends. Only they were all rather long in the tooth. In fact, there wasn’t a girl among them.—Eric’s position as cashier at the City of London Bank indeed offered opportunities a brasher young man might have profited by, among the pretty debs at finishing-schools who scampered in to cash Daddy’s cheques; unfortunately their chic put him out of countenance, the flutter of their long eyelashes fluttered his heart but tied his tongue; the shyness he projected upon Martha was his own. As for the multitude of pretty French girls about his path, they frightened him even more: Mrs. Taylor’s secret but perennial fear of her son’s taking up with a midinette was as nothing to Eric’s personal secret fear of being laughed at for his accent …
    Thus Martha, plain and stocky as she was, filled a space too long vacant. Eric’s very conventionality demanded that it should be filled. To be young, and in Paris, and not in love—(“Gay Paree!” as Harry Gibson would have said. “ Amour, amour! ”)—bothered him as much as if he’d been at Lord’s cricket-ground without a club-tie. For several days before he spoke to her the sight of Martha solitary on a bench in the Tuileries had set every necessary emotion in ferment. It was indeed a remarkable feat of will-power on his part, but he was growing desperate.
    The emotion that led Martha to permit his attentions—or at least to refrain from biting his head off—was more practical. Eric bagged the seat for her. A spell of fine weather immediately succeeding made the service peculiarly welcome. Though the Gardens were thronged, even if Martha stayed to wash her brushes there was her place kept. Common politeness forbade a snub—or if not politeness, self-interest.
    Thus they entered day by day into something like acquaintance. Eric having told her his name, Martha was too socially inexperienced not to return her own.—He found it infinitely preferable to the Jennifers and Lettices (some with an Hon. in front) on his Bank’s books: Martha was a name to reassure the most timid heart that beat. As for her status as art-student, which might have alarmed him by its Bohemian implications, Eric knew too much of Paris to take it seriously. Half the debs he cashed cheques for called themselves art-students …
    â€œI’m only surprised your people let you come,” said Eric, “all on your little own!”
    (He actually managed to think of Martha as little. He was at any rate some inches the taller: the advantage in weight was all on Martha’s side, but Eric managed to cope with that too by thinking of her with affectionate amusement as puppy-fat. In the same way he saw her stolid countenance as serene, and her taciturnity as shyness. Martha, by saying as little as possible,