_Wherein is Some Worship of the Moon_
It was the national fête of the Republic--the Fourteenth of July.
All day, Paris had been a-rattle with tap of hammers. At every street
corner, baggy-trousered carpenters had been putting the last nails into
the pulpits of the lightly made bandstands; and now, as the flaring
sun went down in golden glory over the edge of the city, bathing the
decorated streets in amber light--the boarding of the bandstands
being covered with the gay splendour of tricolour bunting, and gaudy
coloured paper lanterns strung in gay festoons from lamp and tree and
window--Paris felt herself arrayed in all her holiday attire as she
took breath before her dancing.
At the end of the street where Noll and Betty had their lodging, the
carpenters completed their task amidst wide-eyed wonder of inquisitive
children and chatter of gossiping neighbours that stood at gaze along
the pavement. The landlord of the little restaurant opposite called to
the workmen to go and sit down at his tables and quench their thirst.
The great slouching fellows needed no second bidding--indeed, they knew
the liquor good, for the fat genial little host, Monsieur Charcot, had
been plying them with tankards throughout the day, at every hint of
heat or weariness, and the hints had not been few, urging them to push
on, that he might get up his lanterns, and cover the stand with the
red, white and blue stripes of France before darkness fell.
Beaming with hospitality, he now sallied across the road, two waiters
at his side carrying paper lanterns and bundles of the nation’s flags;
and the rickety bandstand was soon converted into as near a gorgeous
opera-box as the limitations would allow.
Madame Charcot stood near, crying orders to the waiters, which nobody
obeyed.
All the pretty _blanchisseuses_, bare-headed, were out along the curb,
adding advice and merriment. The which brought out the shop-lads. There
was kindly genial banter, and much talk and prophecy of dancing in the
evening.
The old people stood about, smiling; and were raising reminiscences
from the dead.
In the evening, Gaston Latour and Horace and the rest whooped to Noll
and Betty to come down from their high lodging; and in a jovial party
they wandered through the glowing streets of the illuminated city. All
Paris was dancing. Under the gaudy paper lanterns the citizens were
strolling, dancing, capering, laughing, singing--happy as children. And
when the students, returning from their long evening’s promenading,
came into the street where they lived, the bray and blare and shrill
music of fiddle and trombone and cornet and flute, rending the rustling
air with an old-time waltz-tune, told that the quarter was still
dancing.
The youths and maids were dancing; the middle-aged were dancing;
shop-folk and artisan; the old people were dancing.
Mine host, Monsieur Charcot, kicked a heel, blowing hard to keep the
time with a young milliner to the pace of the ill-jigging waltz--the
trombone being overfull of beer was inclined to sluggardy, whilst the
fiddle had developed ambition under the heat of the wines of Italy to
lead the music by more than an easy length. The trombone did well,
doggedly thrashing the air with overwhelming beat of time, save when he
hiccupped, when confusion would threaten. All the little sempstresses
and washer-girls were stepping it, swinging round in the whirl with
the grocer lads and the youths of the quarter, petticoats a-whirl. The
pasty-faced and sullen young workman Hiéne, in his best clothes, was
jumping through the measure with Madelaine, who had given old widow
Snacheur the slip. And now the melancholy-visaged Gaston Latour seized
the plump concierge about the height a waist had once been, and Madame
Hodendouche, but mildly protesting, found herself flung off her feet
and swept into the revolving whirl, well-pleased enough to be in the
social eddy....
All in the street danced out the night, the same tune serving more than
thrice--indeed, the call for new airs had started an unseemly brawl
between the fiddle and the trombone on the art of Wagner, which had
only been washed out in Chartreuse. So they got to jigging it again to
the old limping harmonies. They were not over-critical. They had all
grown up together, had danced out the national fête together through
the warm summer evening in the ruddy glow of the orange-paper lanterns
to the like halting music since they could well remember. Thus they
now footed it, until the white light of the coming day crept over the
eastern roofs and snuffed out the orange glow of the candles that
guttered in the lanterns’ sockets, and sent them all to their beds.
The early midsummer sun that came a-peeping into the town lit silent
thoroughfares in a drowsy city.
The arisen sun ascending into the high firmament saw the students
thronging to the railway-stations, with scanty baggage and uproarious
souls, to spend the hot days in country places or by the sea--a cheery
boisterous crew, good-tempered, chaffing, frankly jovial.
The exodus from the Latin Quarter begun, the “boys” burst in upon Noll
and Betty--Babette and Horace and the Disturber of Funerals and the
rest, and Gaston Latour. They all helped to pack, and dragged them
off to join the mighty holiday stream, going down to the outskirts of
Paris, to Enghien-les-Bains and Montmorency, by train, Gaston Latour
rending the air with devilish din of French horn, and insisting on
dancing the Arab _danse-de-ventre_ before railway officials and the
police, his melancholy face seriously unsmiling as he stepped it, the
others wailing the mournful Moorish music and beating time with tap of
canes or beat of hands.... And all too fleetly the summer days went by
in the pretty country places round about Paris.
Betty loved this summer time. Noll was with her all the day long,
blithe of heart and in good spirits, sketching with her and a dozen
others out of doors or writing by her side in their delightfully bare
room in the primitive inn. The world was fragrant with the scent of
flowers.
As the sunny daytime passed into the violet grey dusk, they would
wander arm in arm along the pretty country roads--Babette and Horace,
Noll and Betty, Gaston and the beautiful Liane, the Five Foolish
Virgins and the rest--straying through the twilight carelessly, never
wandering too far from civilization and the band and the casino’s
paper lanterns--never too far to reach the merry dinner of an evening,
lolling in pleasant fatigue round the table in the trim little bosquets
of the courtyards of inns, where they all loitered over dinner to talk
wondrous nonsense about the delights of a country life, mixed with
criticisms of art and of books and of the world. And, the dinner done,
they would stroll round the lake, and sit upon the banks, and gaze
entranced at the moonlit fairyland--the lights that danced upon the
waters and the stars that bespangled the sapphire heavens with a myriad
winking mysteries--glad to be alive where all was beautiful.
And there would be sweet idle talk of the day when they should all have
villas on the lake with lawns by the water’s edge, disdainful of the
rough struggle of the world, watching the pigeons and the peacocks in
the sun, listening to the coo of doves, and, when the day was done,
content to sit at gaze with the wizard moon and myriad stars, fretting
their souls with no stupid thought for fame or name--yet each one
knowing in his heart that in most delicious idleness would be weariness
beyond the weariness of toil.
There was one thorn only in all this summer delight--Moll Davenant,
moody, a prey to odd whims, possessed now of strange reservations and
sudden shrinkings, now frightened, now daring, now boisterous, now
brooding, lived feverishly, crowding her life into its little span,
her pathetic eyes on her doom, as one who knows how short a while she
has to live. More than once, Betty had sold some trinket of her own to
get the wherewithal to tempt the uncertain appetite; and Noll, too,
was the poorer by more than one little possession which he cheerily
said he did not want. Then the girl would disappear for days, returning
fagged and troubled, like one drugged. Her flushed colour showed that
the flames of her life were burning out the tissues of her frail body,
and a feverish desire to live the night as well as the day urged her
to frantic bursts of work and of excitement, alternating with long
hours of lassitude and a pathetic patience and humility and listless
idleness. One day she disappeared and was not heard of for a week; then
the news came from far away that she had been seen at the casino at
Dieppe with Aubrey.
* * * * *
At the doors of the Hotel Continental in Paris stood Ponsonby Wattles
Ffolliott, talking to Quogge Myre; Rupert Greppel and Lord Monty Askew
stood at either hand; they gazed superciliously at the passers-by.
Ponsonby Ffolliott, blowing cigarette smoke through his nostrils, said,
drawling:
“It’s an awful bore--but Lady Boone is throwing her girl at my head--an
awfully pretty girl, she is, by Jove--but, you know, a fellow must have
his fling first--or how is a fellow to know he loves the girl--and I am
really quite too young----”
They slapped him on the back, and there was laughter.
Ponsonby Ffolliott felt the glory of a man of the world jumping in his
marrow; he kicked out his legs:
“Yes,” he said affectedly. “The old trout made me swear to go down to
Enghien-les-Bains for lunch. Such a silly hole--such a silly meal--but,
you know, a fellow isn’t bound by a promise made under compulsion, is
he?”
Ponsonby blew out smoke:
“By Jove,” he said, staring at a girl, one of a bevy that passed, who
glanced a roguish eye at him--“what a very pretty girl!”
Ponsonby kicked out his legs jauntily; and followed the girl. And, as
he walked, the long white laces of his stays hung down behind and swung
to his strutting.