_Which sees the Day break in the Tavern of_ The Golden Sun
A misty dark night. The drizzle that slowly drenched the town met with
but damp welcome the students and revellers as they poured out of the
Bal Bullier at midnight; it sent them swarming into the genial warmth
and cheery glitter of the cafés on the Boule Miche.
And the inhospitable rain, having emptied the streets, slyly took
itself off into the outer darkness and passed out of the city, leaving
the trees weeping in the blackness.
Noll, wearied by the frantic toolings of the students’ Bal Bullier, put
up the collar of his coat, and finding that the drizzle no more wet
his face, he strolled down the Boule Miche, struck across the cobbles
of the riverside quays, and striding into the murk that hung about the
river, he found himself on the bridge. He stood and leaned over the
parapet, peering into the blackness of the foggy depths that swirled in
pitchy fumes below.
The yeasty stillness yielded a sob.
A young woman’s voice near at hand spoke low.
Aubrey’s voice answered her, impatiently. The fog carried every
inflection of his drawling irritation and peevish insolence. He pshawed:
“Women take love so seriously,” he said--“it is women who spoil it....
Love is the pastime of life, the gaiety of days, a thing to enrich the
senses, to give man his recreation--and women filch it of the very
essence of its charm by making it the sordid business of life. Robbed
of its delicate mysteries, of its butterfly flitting from flower to
flower, it becomes--marriage--and the begetting of children--and the
clamour of household needs--and milk-bottles--and soiled linen....
Why are you not content to love many men, Hélène, as I have found the
rhapsody of life in loving many women?... It is the spiritual----”
“The spiritual!”
She laughed a little harsh laugh; and added sharply:
“Come, master Aubrey--we know each other too well to make it worth
while to lie--it deceives neither ourselves nor the other; wherefore
then the intention of it?... I would only ask you not to love the other
woman _before_ me----”
She was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
“Come,” she said hoarsely, “this air is killing me--I must have
warmth--I am starving, body and soul.”
“The tavern of _The Golden Sun_ does not close till daybreak,” he said
sullenly.
She laughed sadly:
“Yes,” she said--“they turn life upside down--the artists--like the
religious....” She sighed consent. “All right. We will go there.”
They passed Noll, where he leaned against the parapet of the bridge,
almost touching him.
He roused moodily and followed the sound of their footsteps in the
pitchy murk.
He, too, would go to the tavern of _The Golden Sun_.
He turned to his left as he stepped off the bridge, and kept by the
river-wall.
There came to him now and then through the clammy darkness ahead the
sound of the girl’s coughing. This woman was Hélène, the fragile beauty
whom Aubrey had filched from her easy-going husband, a young doctor of
the commercial quarter across the river. In the letter she had written
to bid the honest commonplace fellow farewell (Aubrey had told it at
a tavern merry-making amidst the sly laughter of his fellows) she had
complained that he had no romance, that the very soles of his thick
and clumsy boots were like his own solid soul, an offence to her sense
of the subtleties--that she must out into the world to seek romance
and the colour of life. The blow had fallen out of a serene day in
the face of the poor fellow, and it was matter of common report that
he had reeled from it--he, being unpoetical and unappreciative of the
picturesque glamour of wickedness, had not even appreciated that he was
party to a romance--had taken instead to avoiding his fellows and was
walking with Shame--furtively, unheroically. Paris had laughed. And the
girl----
She was getting her fill of crude adventure now....
Out of the reek there came again to Noll the pitiful cough. The
footsteps stopped for awhile. A quickly suppressed sob. Again footsteps.
In the sombre gliding river below, the green lights of vaguely looming
blacknesses that were canal-boats, splashed emerald flames in the
inky flood. Loomed now across the waters the massive solidity of the
twin-towered cathedral, black against the black night; and beyond and
low down upon the pitchy tide the pale lights that burn all night in
the house of the dishonoured dead gleamed through the window-slats of
the Morgue.
Noll, hearing the cough again, roused to the sound that the others had
left the riverside. He crossed the drenched quays, and leaving the
river behind him, struck into a narrow street that was possessed by the
spectral wraithes flung down the grimy old walls by the ghostly lamps
that hung thereon. Along the gloomy thoroughfare the chill airs, from
the river hard by, set the lamp’s flame flickering, and sent dusky
shadows moving stealthily out of dingy doorways and black corners,
shadows that stealthily stole back again. And amidst the silent
spectres, flecked by the down-flung light of the creaking wall-lamps,
flitted the figures of the man and woman; and back from amongst the
ghostly wraithes came the pitiful harsh cough.
Their shadowy figures turned into the squalid street that is called the
Rue Galande; and Noll closely followed them, they came to a halt before
the low arch of a doorway and stepped out of sight.
When Noll reached the arch, the red maw of which yawned into the sordid
street, he saw by the legend written upon the glass of the battered
gas-lamp which hung awry overhead that he was at the threshold of the
tavern of _The Golden Sun_. Across the dark stretch of rudely paved
courtyard beyond, the two figures were passing blackly under the yellow
flood of a gas-lamp, the restless flame of which showed a flight of
steps leading underground. The twain descended into the gloom of the
passage and were swallowed in the cellars from which came a gust of
song and the sound of music as the doors opened and shut upon them.
Noll descended the steps, pushed open the doors at the bottom, and
stepped into the tavern of _The Golden Sun_.
He blinked at the lighted room, dim as it was. The heavy air, laden
with the fumes of beer, and hazy with the clouds of tobacco-smoke, met
him with a pleasant warmth of welcome.
Through the haze he saw that the people sat, silently giving their
whole attention to a slender youth who stood at the far end of the room
declaiming verse, leaning upon a piano--a grey-haired musician touching
mellow chords gently and running a light accompaniment of music atune
with the speaker’s fine voice.
Noll was little in need of the superfluous pantomime of a burly
thick-set waiter who made melodramatic signs to him to stand still--to
make no sound.
As he stood there, listening to the telling accents of the young poet,
his eyes ranged over the strange gathering of bohemians who sat about
the little round tables. They were shabby enough, some of them, to have
been the denizens of a thieves’ kitchen; but there was an atmosphere of
culture abroad that took all incongruity from the noble sentiments and
subtlety of accent that fell from the lips of the poet in that dingy
place.
The women who sat at the tables were not the gay butterflies that
flitted in silk and satin about the glittering cafés of the Boule
Miche. Their picturesqueness was of a more subtle kind, and its
daintiness shone through the pitiful simplicity of meagre apparel.
Here were no rollicking students; here was no frantic fooling; here was
a note in the air that Noll had not yet heard sounding in gatherings
that laid more strenuous claims to the pursuit of art.
His eyes ranging, caught signs from Aubrey to go and sit beside him;
and, the poem ending in a dulcet pathetic sigh for the eternal tragedy
of life, Noll took advantage of the resulting bravos and applause to
make his way to Aubrey’s table. The quick-eyed waiter was there as
soon as he, and bawled Noll’s order for three bocks of beer to the
patroness, who shrilly echoed it.
Aubrey was frankly glad to see him; and it was soon abundantly clear
to Noll that he was as frankly glad to be relieved from the sole
entertainment of the pallid woman beside him. Hélène, too, roused to
interest in the fine young Englishman--the frown left her handsome
brows.
The grey-haired musician ran his slender fingers over the keys of
the piano; and there stepped on to the little platform on which it
stood the only man who seemed out of place in that strange company of
dreamers. Burly, powerful, big-headed, with cunning eyes that count
profits, slits above baggy underlids, he was of the blonde breed that
plans and orders--full-bellied, calculating, of those whose fat hands
get money, and, with short grasping pointed fingers, hold it when got.
He rang a little bell, and silence followed its tinklings.
Hélène leaned over to Noll:
“He is _The Golden Sun_,” she whispered, and laughed low.
He had the honour to announce that Madame Hélène would declaim an
apostrophe from her last written work.
The young woman arose simply, smiled to Noll, and making her way to
the piano, took her place before it amidst a salvo of applause; and
with a strange thrill in her husky voice, she spoke of the cruelty of
Nature, the eyes glowing in the deep shadows of her fine brows that
gleamed white amidst the masses of her tawny hair, where she stood
below the light, gracefully poised against the piano. She uttered the
exquisitely phrased sentences in a well modulated low voice that was
vibrant with suppressed passion, without trick, without gesture....
The warfare of life was unceasing, unmerciful. Race struck at race,
man lay in wait for man--on the mart, on the field of battle, in love,
robbed the one the other of the simplest needs of life.... Everywhere
was struggle--everywhere was strenuous rivalry--at the end of all,
the grave.... The caged bird, what a thing of pity! Denied the range
of life, destitute of its mate, its wings cramped, its functions
atrophied--yet--open the door of its narrow prison, let it but fly
across the sweet-scented meadows, and a hawk swings out of the heavens,
falls from the splendid blue, and strikes with rending claws, and tears
out with cruel well-contrived beak the little life from the delicately
designed beauty of the songster.... Why flutter against the encaging
bars? why struggle ever to be in the winds and the free airs? Tush!
wherein was freedom but to flee from death? The little fragile thing
had the gift of song; let it be glad that it had the gift of song.
She uttered the pity of it in the most caressing tongue that the
nations have wrought; and when she had spoken the last word, she bowed
to the thunder of applause, came back to the table, and seated herself
by Noll with a freedom from conceit that touched him.
They came and clasped her hand, and gave her ungrudging praise, with
all the airs and kindly dignity of France. And Noll noticed that Aubrey
was gone....
The room was gay with banter and laughter, glasses clinked, the waiter
sped about busily, bawling orders, and the smoke of cigarettes clouded
the ceiling.
And, of a truth, the atmosphere of the place had a strange fascination
for Noll.
Here were no longer the crude essayings, and the more crude aims of
fledgling studenthood. He was weary of the fierce partisanship, the
shifting foundations, the tentative idols of their passing frenzies,
this taking of sides about things that did not matter.
These people were out of the years of their apprenticeship to the arts.
Here, on the other hand, was no posing at all costs for outrageous
originality, no seeking for the eccentric aspect of things, none of the
fantastic extravagances that marked the revels of the sordid gatherings
in the taverns of Montmartre--for these people had no desire to the
breaking of idols, the outraging of the decencies, the mocking at
ideals.
Art, to these people, was the one serious aim of life.
There was scarce a line uttered this night, whether of recited poem or
song or criticism, which was not perfect in the expression, exquisite
and subtle in the phrasing. There was that air of tactful restraint and
of rightness of statement which in manners are called good breeding.
And if the emotions uttered were somewhat thin or exaggeratedly sad or
tinged overmuch and disproportionately with the grey half-tones of the
pathos of life, if vigour and the strenuous music of the bright days
and the gaiety of life were almost wholly absent, there was at any rate
a feeling for beauty and a sobbing appeal to the pity of the world for
such as are overwhelmed by the destiny of tragedy that held something
of nobility.
These men and women were content, if a neglectful world so ordered it,
to live here in obscurity and poverty, their sole incentive to life
the worship of beauty. Upon the workaday world they turned careless
shoulders--and for them the workaday world, in grim retort, had no
uses, no honours. The worst sin to them was to be Philistine. Here
they met together at a time when drowsy citizens were getting into
their unthinking beds--here they were happy in the companionship of
their fellows throughout the long night, exchanging their ideas of the
beautiful, their polished gentle wit, their praises--here, shrugging
contemptuous shoulders at the conventions of the world, men and women
lived and loved as they listed.
If the world should one day awaken to the works of their genius, so
much the better for the world--if it should clamour for their poesy,
their song, their works of art, well and good. They would be glad that
the world had taste enough to give them fame. But the world must come
to them.... It would make life easier--their clothes would be less
shabby--hunger less biting, less insistent. But what had the world to
give them better than the love of beauty or more pleasant than the
comradeship of them that knew beauty when they saw it? The generations
perhaps would greedily seek the work of their brains; fame would come
if it came.
So said they, gentle-mannered, shabbily attired, simple-hearted,
warming their starved blood with brandy and bocks of beer and accursed
brain-stealing absinthe, living on each other’s kindliness and praise
and genial comradeship, living in dreams, walking on air, wayfarers
in cloudland, scorning all meannesses, garnering with difficulty the
poorest sustenance for daily bread, cheerful though the frost bit and
the hunger thinned their already lean ribs, and penurious want made
their blankets few--proud in their dignity, pitiful to every suffering
thing.
Why heed the sensational events of the day? what mattered that a
Minister had fallen? what did it matter that a scandal was washing
dirty linen in the streets? Such things were dead and buried and
forgot in nine days--but art and music and poetry remained, beauty was
eternal. Why compete in the sordid money-grubbing race for wealth? We
must all die. Why this strenuous hurrying to the open grave?
So they reasoned. And they brought to their meeting no sign or word of
their hard struggle for daily bread. They brought to their comradeship
only laughter and wit and gentle faces and smiles....
The small hours of the night passed.
It was nearing five o’clock, and the room began to thin of its
frequenters. Noll called the waiter and paid the reckoning of saucers
for himself and Hélène. She arose with him to go; and as they opened
the doors and stepped out of the heavy air of the room, the grey dawn
had broken and the dingy lamp of _The Golden Sun_ was paling into
insignificance in the chill day.
As they reached the river, they found, swathed in multitudinous wraps,
a stout woman who was selling hot milk and rolls. Noll did not ask the
girl, but ordered a couple of bowls of the comforting stuff and a roll.
The girl drank the milk gladly; and of the roll she was very careful
not to lose the crumbs.
Noll took her to her poor room on the fifth story where was her
threadbare home.
At the threshold she asked him in.
He smiled.
He took her pathetic face between his two hands, and kissed her upon
the wan cheek:
“No, Hélène,” he said--“I love another woman.”
She turned and went into her room.
As he descended the stair she came out to him again:
“Will you be at _The Golden Sun_ to-night?” she asked--her lips a
little anxious and apart--beautiful lips.
He hesitated--pondered--smiled:
“Yes,” he said.
As Noll crossed the Boule Miche a white mist hung over the river; at
the far end of the students’ highway the heavens were chilly grey; all
the stars were burnt out of the drab firmament.