A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS
... Adowne
They prayd him sit, and gave him for to feed.
--Spenser: _Faerie Queene_.
Charlie Cartaret would have told you--indeed, he frequently did tell
his friends--that the mere fact of a man being an artist was no proof
that he lacked in the uncommon sense commonly known as common.
Cartaret was quite insistent upon this and, as evidence in favor of
his contention, he was accustomed to point to C. Cartaret, Esq. He,
said Cartaret, was at once an artist and a practical man: it was
wholly impossible, for instance, to imagine him capable of any silly
romance.
Nevertheless, when left alone in his room by the departure of the Lady
on that February evening, he sat for a long time with the strange
rose between his fingers and a strange look in his eyes. He regarded
the rose until the last ray of light had altogether faded from the
West. Only then did he recall that he had invited sundry persons to
dine with him at the Cafe Des Deux Colombes, and when he had made
ready to go to them, the rose was still in his reluctant hand.
Cartaret looked about him stealthily. He had been in the room for some
hours and he should have been thoroughly aware that he was alone in
it; but he looked, as all guilty men do, to right and left to make
sure. Then, like a naughty child, he turned his back to the
street-window.
He stood thus a bare instant, yet in that instant his hand first
raised something toward his lips, and then bestowed that same
something somewhere inside his waistcoat, a considerable distance from
his heart, but directly over the rib beneath which ill-informed people
believe the heart to be. This accomplished, he exhibited a rigorously
practical face to the room and swaggered out of it, ostentatiously
humming a misogynistic drinking-song:
"There's nothing, friend, 'twixt you and me
Except the best of company.
(There's just one bock 'twixt you and me,
and I'll catch up full soon!)
What woman's lips compare to this:
This sturdy seidel's frothy kiss----"
Armand Garnier, one of the men that were to dine with Cartaret
to-night, had written the words of which this is a free translation,
and Houdon had composed the air--he composed it impromptu for Devignes
over an absinthe, after laboring upon it in secret for an entire
week--but Cartaret, when he reached the note that stood for the last
word here given, came to an abrupt stop; he was facing the door of the
room opposite his own. He continued facing it for quite a minute, but
he heard nothing.
"M. Refrogne," he said, when he thrust his head into the concierge's
box downstairs, "if--er--if anybody should inquire for me this
evening, you will please tell them that I am dining at the Cafe Des
Deux Colombes."
Nothing could be seen in the concierge's box, but from it came a grunt
that might have been either assent or dissent.
"Yes," said Cartaret, "in the rue Jacob."
Again the ambiguous grunt.
"Exactly," Cartaret agreed; "the Cafe Des Deux Colombes, in the rue
Jacob, close by the rue Bonaparte. You--you're quite sure you won't
forget?"
The grunt changed to an ugly chuckle, and, after the chuckle, an ugly
voice said:
"Monsieur expects something unusual: he expects an evening visitor?"
"Confound it, no!" snapped Cartaret. He had been wildly hoping that
perhaps The Girl might need some aid or direction that evening and
might seek it of him. "Not at all," he pursued, "but you see----"
"How then?" inquired the voice.
Cartaret's hand went to his pocket and drew forth one of the few
franc-pieces that remained there.
"Just, please, remember what I've said," he requested.
In the darkness of the box into which it was extended, his hand was
grasped by a larger and rougher hand, and the franc was deftly
extracted.
"_Merci, monsieur._"
A barely appreciable softening of the tone encouraged Cartaret. He
balanced himself from foot to foot and asked:
"Those people--the ones, you understand, that have rented the room
opposite mine?"
Refrogne understood but truly.
"Well--in short, who are they, monsieur?"
"Who knows?" asked Refrogne in the darkness. Cartaret could feel him
shrug.
"I rather thought you might," he ventured.
The darkness was silent; a good concierge answers questions, not
general statements.
"Where--don't you know where they come from?"
There was speech once more. Refrogne, it said, neither knew nor
cared. In the rue du Val de Grace people continually came and
went--all manner of people from all manner of places--so long as they
paid their rent, it was no concern of Refrogne's. For all the
information that he possessed, the two people of whom monsieur
inquired might be natives of Cochin-China. Mademoiselle evidently
wanted to be an artist, as scores of other young women, and Madame,
her guardian and sole companion, evidently wanted Mademoiselle to be
nothing at all. There were but two of them, thank God! The younger
spoke much French with an accent terrible; the elder understood
French, but spoke only some pig of a language that no civilized man
could comprehend. That was all that Refrogne had to tell.
Cartaret went on toward the scene of his dinner-party. He wished he
did not have to go. On the other hand, he was sure he had thrown
Refrogne a franc to no purpose: the Lady of the Rose was little likely
to seek him! He found the evening cold and his rain-coat inadequate.
He began humming the drinking-song again.
They were singing it outright, in a full chorus, when he entered the
little room on the first floor of the Cafe Des Deux Colombes. The
table was already spread, the feast already started. The unventilated
room was flooded with light and full of the steam of hot viands.
Maurice Houdon, his red cheeks shining, his black mustache stiffly
waxed, sat at the head of the table as he had promised to do,
performing the honors with a regal grace and playing imaginary themes
with every flourish of address to every guest: a different theme for
each. On his right was a vacant place, the sole apparent reference to
the host of the evening; on his left, Armand Garnier, the poet, very
thin and cadaverous, with long dank locks and tangled beard, his skin
waxen, his lantern-jaw emitting no words, but working lustily upon the
food. Next to Cartaret's place bobbed the pear-shaped Devignes,
leading the chorus, as became the only professional singer in the
company. Across from him was Philippe Varachon, the sculptor, whose
nose always reminded Cartaret of an antique and long lost bit of
statuary, badly damaged in exhumation; and at the foot Seraphin was
seated, the first to note Cartaret's arrival and the only one to
apologize for not having delayed the dinner.
He got up immediately, and his whiskers tickled the American's cheek
with the whisper:
"It was ready to serve, and Madame swore that it would perish. My
faith, what would you?"
Pasbeaucoup was darting among the guests, wiping fresh plates with a
napkin and his dripping forehead with his bare hand. Cartaret felt
certain that the little man would soon confuse the functions of the
two.
"Ah-h-h!" cried Houdon. He rose from his place and endeavored to
restore order by beating with a fork upon an empty tumbler, as an
orchestral conductor taps his baton--at the same time nodding fiercely
at Pasbeaucoup to refill the tumbler with red wine. He was the sole
member of the company not long known to their host, but he said:
"Messieurs, I have the happiness to present to you our distinguished
American fellow-student, M. Charles Cartar_ette_. Be seated among us,
M. Cartarette," he graciously added; "pray be seated."
Cartaret sat down in the place kindly reserved for him, and the
interruption of his appearance was so politely forgotten that he
wished he had not been such a fool as to make it. The song was
resumed. It was not until the salad was served and Pasbeaucoup had
retired below-stairs to assist in preparing the coffee, that Houdon
turned again to Cartaret and executed what was clearly to be the
Cartaret theme.
"We had despaired of your arrival, Monsieur," said he.
Cartaret said he had observed signs of something of the sort.
"Truly," nodded Houdon. His tongue rolled a ball of salad into his
cheek and out of the track of speech. "Doubtless you had the one
living excuse, however."
"I don't follow you," said Cartaret.
Houdon leered. His fingers performed on the table-cloth something
that might have been the _motif_ of Isolde.
"I have heard," said he, "your American proverb that there are but two
adequate excuses for tardiness at dinner--death and a lady--and I am
charmed, monsieur, to observe that you are altogether alive."
If Cartaret's glance indicated that he would like to throttle the
composer, Cartaret's glance did not misinterpret.
"We won't discuss that, if you please," said he.
But Houdon was incapable of understanding such glances in such a
connection. He tapped for the attention of his orchestra and got it.
"Messieurs," he announced, "our good friend of the America of the
North has been having an adventure."
Everybody looked at Cartaret and everybody smiled.
"Delicious," squeaked Varachon through his broken nose.
"Superb," trilled the pear-shaped singer Devignes.
Garnier's lantern-jaws went on eating. Seraphin Dieudonne caught
Cartaret's glance imploringly and then shifted, in ineffectual
warning, to Houdon.
"But that was only what was to be expected, my children," the musician
continued. "What can we poor Frenchmen look for when a blond Hercules
of an American comes, rich and handsome, to our dear Paris? Only
to-day I observed, renting an abode in the house that Monsieur and I
have the honor to share, a young mademoiselle, the most gracious and
beautiful, accompanied by a _tuteur_, the most ferocious; and I noted
well that they went to inhabit the room but across the landing from
that of M. Cartarette. Behold all! At once I said to myself: 'Alas,
how long will it be before this confiding----'"
He stopped short and looked at Cartaret, for Cartaret had grasped the
performing hand of the composer and, in a steady grip, forced it
quietly to the table.
"I tell you," said Cartaret, gently, "that I don't care to have you
talk in this strain."
"How then?" blustered the amazed musician.
"If you go on," Cartaret warned him, "you will have to go on from the
floor; I'll knock you there."
"Maurice!" cried Seraphin, rising from his chair.
"Messieurs!" piped Devignes.
Varachon growled at Houdon, and Garnier reached for a water-bottle as
the handiest weapon of defense. Houdon and Cartaret were facing each
other, erect, each waiting for the other to make a further move, the
former red, the latter white, with anger. There followed that flashing
pause of quiet which is the precursor of battle.
The battle, however, was not forthcoming. Instead, through the
silence, there came a roar of voices that diverted the attention of
even the chief combatants. It was a roar of voices from the cafe
below: a heavy rumble that was unmistakably Madame's and a clatter of
unintelligible shrieks and demands that were feminine but
unclassifiable. Now one voice shouted and next the other. Then the two
joined in a mighty explosion, and little Pasbeaucoup was shot up the
stairs and among the diners as if he were the first rock from the
crater of an emptying volcano.
He staggered against the table and jolted the water-bottle out of the
poet's hand.
"Name of a Name!" he gasped. "She is a veritable tigress, that woman
there!"
They had no time then to inquire whom he referred to, though they knew
that, however justly he might think it, he would never, even in terror
like the present, say such a thing of his wife. The words were no
sooner free of his lips than a larger rock was vomited from the
volcano, and a still larger, the largest rock of the three, came
immediately after.
Everybody was afoot now. They saw that Pasbeaucoup cowered against the
wall in a fear terrible because it was greater than his fear for
Madame; they saw that Madame, who was the third rock, was clinging to
the apron-strings of another woman, who was rock number two, and they
saw that this other woman was a stocky figure, who carried in her hand
a curious, wide head-dress, and who wore a parti-colored apron that
began over her ample breasts and ended by brushing against her equally
ample boots, and a black skirt of simple stuff and extravagant puffs,
surmounted by a short-skirted blouse or basque of the same material.
Her face was round and wrinkled like a last winter's apple on the
kitchen-shelf; but her eyes shone red, her hands beat the air
vigorously, and from her lips poured a lusty torrent of sounds that
might have been protestations, appeals or curses, yet were certainly,
considered as words, nothing that any one present had ever heard
before.
She ran forward; Madame ran forward. The stranger shouldered Madame;
Madame dragged her back. The stranger cried out more of her alien
phrases; Madame shouted French denunciations. The Gallic diners formed
a grinning circle, eager to lose no detail of the sort of wrangle
that a Frenchman loves best to watch: a wrangle between women.
Cartaret made his way through the ring and put his hand on the
stranger's shoulder. She seemed to understand, and relapsed into
quiet, attentive but alert.
"Now," said Cartaret, "one at a time, please. Madame, what is the
trouble?"
"Trouble?" roared Madame. Her face did not change expression, but she
held her arms akimbo, pug-nose and strong chin poked defiantly at the
strange interloper. "You may well say it, trouble!"
She put her position strongly and at length. She had been in the
_caisse_, with no one of the world in the cafe, when, crying barbarous
threats incomprehensible, this she-bandit, this--this _anarchiste
infame_, had burst in from the street, disrupting the peace of the
Deux Colombes and endangering its well-known quiet reputation with the
police.
That was the gist of it. When it was delivered, Cartaret faced the
stranger.
"And you, Madame?" he asked, in French.
The stranger strode forward as a pugilist steps from his corner for
the round that he expects to win the fight for him. She clapped her
wide head-dress upon her head, where it settled itself with a rakish
tilt.
"Holy pipe!" cried Houdon. "In that I recognize her. It is the
ferocious _tuteur_!"
Cartaret's interest became tense.
"What did you want here?" he urged, still speaking French.
The stranger said, twice over, something that sounded like
"Kar-kar-tay."
"She is mad," squeaked Varachon.
"She is worse; she is German," vowed Madame.
Cartaret raised his hand to silence these contentions.
"Do you understand me?" he urged.
The wide head-dress flapped a vehement assent.
"But you can't answer?"
The head-dress fluttered a negative, and the mouth mumbled a negative
in a French so thick, hesitant and broken as to be infinitely less
expressive than the shake of the head.
Cartaret remembered what the concierge Refrogne had told him. To the
circle of curious people he explained:
"She can understand a little French, but she cannot speak it."
Madame snorted. "Why then does she come to this place so respectable
if she cannot talk like a Christian?"
"Because," said Cartaret, "she evidently thought she would be
intelligently treated."
It was clear to him that she would not have come had her need not been
desperate. He made another effort to discover her nationality.
"Who of you speaks something besides French?" he asked of the company.
Not Madame; not Seraphin or Houdon: they were ardent Parisians and of
course knew no language but their own. As for Garnier, as a French
poet and a native of the pure-tongued Tours, he would not have soiled
his lips with any other speech had he known another. Varachon, it
turned out, was from the Jura, and had picked up a little Swiss-German
during a youthful _liaison_ at Pontarlier. He tried it now, but the
stranger only shook her head-dress at him.
"She knows no German," said Varachon.
"Such German!" sniffed Houdon.
"Chut! This proves rather that she knows it too well," grumbled
Madame. "She but wishes to conceal it; probably she is a German spy."
Devignes said he knew Italian, and he did seem to know a sort of
Opera-Italian, but it, too, was useless.
Cartaret had an inspiration.
"Spanish!" he suggested. "Does any one know any Spanish?"
Pasbeaucoup did; he knew two or three phrases--chiefly relating to
prices on the menu of the Deux Colombes--but to him also the awful
woman only shook her head in ignorance.
Cartaret took up the French again.
"Can you not tell me what you want here?" he pleaded.
"Kar-kar-tay," said the stranger.
"Ah!" cried Seraphin, clapping his hands. "Does not Houdon say that
she makes her abode in the same house that you make yours? She seeks
you, monsieur. 'Kar-kar-tay,' it is her manner of endeavoring to say
Cartar_ette_."
At the sound of that name, the stranger nodded hard.
"_Oui, oui!_" she cried.
She understood that her chief inquisitor was Cartaret, and it was
indeed Cartaret that she sought. She flung herself on her knees to
him. When he hurriedly raised her, she caught at the skirt of his coat
and nearly pulled it from him in an attempt to drag him to the stairs.
Cartaret looked sharply at Houdon. The musician having been so
recently saved from the wrath of his host, was momentarily discreet:
he hid his smile behind one of the thin bands that contrasted so
sharply with his plump cheeks.
"Messieurs," said Cartaret, "I am going with this lady."
They all edged forward.
"And I am going alone," added the American. "I wish you good-night."
"You will be knifed in the street," said Madame. Her tone implied:
"And it will serve you right."
None of the others seemed to mind his going; the wrangle over, they
were ready for their coffee and liqueurs. Houdon was frankly relieved.
Only Seraphin protested.
"And you will leave your dinner unfinished?" he cried.
Cartaret was taking his hat and rain-coat from the row of pegs on the
wall where, among the other guests', he had hung them when he entered.
He nodded his answer to Seraphin's query.
"Leave your dinner?" said Seraphin. "But my God, it is paid for!"
"Good-night," said Cartaret, and was plunged down the stairs by the
strangely-garbed woman tugging at his hand.