_Wherein the Rich Man’s Son seeks the Sweets of Poverty--not Wholly
without Success_
On the northern heights of Montmartre, into a paved courtyard, where
Horace Malahide had his rooms, several laughing students were carrying
forth the furnishments from one of the houses, piling them in a heap on
the cobbled ground. A divan was already in the handcart, and on top of
the divan sat a youth whom they called Gaston, who, with a great brass
French horn round about his shoulders, was solemnly sounding a faulty
rendering of a quaint old hunting call.
Out of the hurly-burly tripped into the court a pretty girl, carrying
a couple of hat-boxes and some airy feminine wearing apparel. She
halted before the handcart in evident anxiety as to a safe place for
their stowage--a perplexed frown came over her handsome face. One of
the noisy young fellows, who spoke his French with a strong American
accent, saw her bewilderment, plucked the musical Gaston by the heel,
and brought him with a clatter to the ground, where, rubbing the back
of his skull, he settled himself on a rug, and, fixing his mouth to the
horn again, took up the tune where he had left off. The young American
flung open the lid of the divan and stowed away inside it the girl’s
hat-boxes and scant wardrobe.
“That all, Babette?” he asked.
“No, mon ami--one minute!” she cried.
She skipped up the steps and disappeared into the doorway.
When she came back she was laden with linen and pillows and blankets.
She laughed merrily. The young American calmly helped her to stow the
things away in the divan; and she blithely skipped away again....
Before her doorway, at the passage leading into the court, watching
what passed with a sour scowl, stood the hard-lipped little woman
who was the concierge to the court; indeed, it was this lean woman’s
shrewish tongue that was chiefest cause for the flitting--a clacking
tongue that had wearied Horace for months. And now she had fallen foul
of the girl and had slanged her from the bottom of the court with
taunts and insinuations that Horace had felt compelled to put out of
all remotest chance of repetition--and a restless longing to be back in
the Latin quarter leaped with his desire and hastened it. The girl was
not sorry either; but she was frugally loath to forfeit the remainder
of his lease. He had taken her face between his two hands and kissed
her upon the mouth: “Babette,” he had said--“no living soul does you an
ill turn twice if I can prevent it; we leave to-morrow morning.”
The act had sobered the concierge.
She was brooding upon it now....
The students shut the lid of the divan and flung a rolled mattress on
top; the loading went apace to the rattling musketry of quip and jest
and caper.
Horace, dressed for the street, entered the courtyard and was received
with a loud shout from his noisy comrades--a prolonged blare from
Gaston Latour’s hunting-horn--and there was silence.
Horace glanced round the court, saw that all was ready, and moved
towards the concierge.
He halted before her, put his heels together, took off his hat, and
bowed solemnly. Madame, he said, he felt sure, would understand and
allow for his emotion on quitting her house. He handed the key into
her grasping outstretched fingers, that were itching for a fee, and
commended her soul to her Maker.
“He insults me!” she cried; and the students fell a-laughing.
Horace turned on his heel as the violent oaths poured from the old
shrew’s scolding lips; and the loud tan-tan-taras of the students and
the brassy blaring of the French horn drowned the torrent of abuse.
They began to sing the _Marseillaise_.
Horace walked calmly over to the handcart, took off his coat and hat,
gave them to the girl, and getting between the shafts, he slipped the
leather brace over his shoulders, and, with the help of his singing
companions, pulled the overloaded and swaying cart towards the
gateway--and lurched out into the bright March morning.
Horace made southward, the cart rattling after, down the steep streets
of Montmartre towards the merry roar of the city’s holiday-making. As
the singing, shouting young fellows, hauling and pushing the swaying
cart, rattled past the _Moulin Rouge_ into the Place Blanche, they
ran full tilt into the genial idle crowd that was out to make the
mid-Lenten fête of the Micarême. From all the windows of the great
boulevard thousands of gaily-coloured paper streamers were floating
downwards. The broad damp roadway and the footpaths were strewn with
many-tinted paper confetti that lay like a carpet, muffling the feet
of the people as they moved chatting and laughing along the wide
thoroughfare. What little wheeled traffic there was went at a foot’s
pace.
The riot of students, with Gaston Latour blaring upon the horn, plunged
into the procession.
The police made a rush towards the disturbance, but only to shrug
shoulders when they reached the lumbered swaying cart:
“It is only the students!” said they, and fell a-laughing.
When they turned into the Place St. Michel they came plunging into the
noisy crowd of holiday-makers again, and their march up the students’
beloved thoroughfare was a deafening and triumphant din.
“Orass” was evidently well known, and was greeted with the honours of a
king of Bedlam.
It was in a pause that he took, coming to a halt between the shafts,
to recover breath and give his other ear a turn of Gaston Latour’s
hunting-horn, that Horace espied Noll and Betty standing in the throng.
He called to them to come and join him.
So it came about that, with a laugh, and shyly enough, they joined the
noisiest crew in all Paris that mad March morning.
Swinging round, when they got moving again, into a by-way, they soon
came to a halt in an old courtyard not a hundred paces from Noll and
Betty’s own home amongst the stars.
Horace touched Noll on the arm:
“Take her up to the top rooms,” said he, nodding towards Betty--“they
are mine. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Betty with Noll climbed up the polished, creaking old stairway.
In the courtyard the students got to their unloading, and were soon
carrying the things upstairs.
Horace hoisted a couple of chairs under his arms, and joined the stream.
Betty and Noll landed in a spacious room at last, an airy large studio
that has been the early dwelling-place of more than one man of genius;
and Horace, arriving close on their heels, set down the chairs and
bade Betty welcome to his home. They were all to lunch together as his
guests as soon as the students had set out the place.
The great empty room was very soon an inviting-looking habitation. From
a back room Jonkin was bringing in chairs and lounges that had never
known the handcart. And the young fellows were cheerily laying rugs,
nailing up mirrors, and fixing the stove, singing and skylarking--the
walls were soon a pleasure to look upon, with a few posters of
Steinlen’s and the Beggarstaffs, and sketches, and gay odds and ends.
The young fellows worked away with a will.
The room was nearly wholly furnished, and the youngsters were beginning
to sit about, chatting and smoking, on the floor as often as not, when
the door of the little room off the studio was flung open and the girl
Babette appeared, wearing with dainty grace the delicate fineries of
fashion that a Frenchwoman knows so well how to put on.
There was a sudden silence.
The girl halted midway down the room, her eyes fixed on Betty where she
sat on a divan under the high studio window.
“Mother of God!” said the girl hoarsely--“what a beautiful woman!”
The students yelled with delight.
The girl Babette frowned impatiently, and going close to Horace, she
whispered to him, caressingly.
Horace laughed, and led her by the hand to Betty:
“Babette wants to know if she may kiss you,” he said. “She says you are
very beautiful----”
Betty laughed prettily, rose from her seat and kissed her. And, sitting
down again, she drew the other down beside her on the divan.
Gaston Latour, at a dig of the elbow and mutter from the young
American, started to blare upon the French horn--for there were tears
in the eyes of the laughter-loving frail Babette.
The conversation turned to other things.
Horace announced that they were all now his guests, and were forthwith
to have breakfast sent in from the restaurant near at hand; as he spoke
he noticed that the girl Babette had taken Betty’s left hand in hers
and was turning her wedding-ring round on her slender white finger.
Horace introduced the others to Betty and Noll:
Gaston Latour, who was essaying to bring dignity to the traditions of
painting. Jack Pettigrew, the tall Yankee, whom also they afterwards
came to know together with four other American students as one of the
Five Foolish Virgins--the English students explained, because they
were always late; but the French ones soon put the jest to roost in
their open bewilderment at their dogged belief in the monogamies. Paul
Kendrick of Boston, Massachusetts--which was the fault of Boston, and
Paul wholly without blame in the matter. Kendrick bowed. Harcourt
Phelps, another of the Five Foolish Virgins. Dick Davenant, known as
the Disturber of Funerals, being one who always laughed in the wrong
place. Dandy Donovan, the remaining Foolish Virgin. “Gobemouche” de
Morneville, who was shirking the law, and catching flies when he should
have been catching the subtleties of philosophy and the reasons for
things. He put his heels together and solemnly bowed his close-cropped
head. And half a dozen other young Frenchmen who talked the most
ridiculous Ollendorffian English with serious unwinking eyes masking
their fooling....
Jonkin and the waiters, arriving with dishes and plates, burst into the
room, ushered in by Gaston Latour, gloomily blaring fantastic joy upon
the French horn, and all further conversation was impossible until the
cloth was laid....