never said, "But no! But no!" to Mimi, unless it was for the express
purpose of having one's mouth covered by the softest little pink palm to
be found between the Seine and the Observatoire,--which, to do him
justice, Caffiard was quite capable of scheming to bring about, if only
he had known! He had accepted the little dandelion-down kisses in a
spirit of philosophy, knowing well that they were given not for his
sake, but for Pierre's. But now his protests came to an abrupt
termination, for Mimi suddenly seated herself on his lap, and put one
arm around his neck.
It was nothing short of an achievement, this. Even Caffiard himself had
not imagined that such a thing as his lap was still extant. Yet here was
Mimi, actually installed thereon, with her cheek pressed against his,
and her breath, which was like clover, stirring the ends of his
moustache. But she was smiling at Pierre, the witch! Caffiard could see
it out of the corner of his eye.
"Mais non!" he repeated, but more feebly.
"Mais non! Mais non! Mais non!" mocked Mimi. "Great farceur! Will you
listen, at least? Eh b'en, voilà! Here is my opinion. As to insanity, if
for any one to propose a day in the country is insanity, well then,
yes,--I am insane! Soit! And, again, if you wish to appear serious,--in
Paris, that is to say--soit, également! But when you speak of odious
fatness, you are a type of monsieur extremely low of ceiling, do you
know! Moreover, you are going. Voilà! It is finished. As for Caran, let
him go his way and draw his caricatures--though they are not like
Pierre's, all the world knows!--and, without doubt, his auto will refuse
to move beyond the porte Dauphine, yes, and blow up, bon Dieu! when he
is in the act of mending it. One knows these boxes of vapors, what they
do. And as for the Figaro, b'en, flut! Evidently it will not cease to
exist for lack of your article--eh, l'ami? And it is Mimi who asks
you,--Mimi, do you understand, who invites you to her fête. And you
would refuse her--_toi_!"
"But no! But no!" said Caffiard hurriedly. And meant it.
At this point Pierre wrapped five two-sou pieces in a bit of paper, and
tossed them, out of a little window across the hallway, to a
street-singer whimpering in the court below. Pierre said that they
weighed down his pockets. They were in the way, the clumsy doublins,
said wonderful, spendthrift Pierre!
For the wide sky of the Quartier is forever dotted with little clouds,
scudding, scudding, all day long. And when one of these passes across
the sun, there is a sudden chill in the air, and one walks for a time in
shadow, though the comrade over there, across the way, is still in the
warm and golden glow. But when the sun has shouldered the little cloud
aside again, ah, that is when life is good to live, and goes gayly, to
the tinkle of glasses and the ripple of laughter, and the ring of silver
bits. And when the street-singer in the court receives upon his head a
little parcel of coppers that are too heavy for the pocket, and smiles
to himself, who knows but what he understands?
For what is also true of the Quartier is this--that, in sunshine or
shadow, one finds a soft little hand clasping his, firm, warm,
encouraging and kindly, and hears a gay little voice that, in foul
weather, chatters of the bright hours which it is so sweet to remember,
and, in fair, says never a word of the storms which it is so easy to
forget!
The veriest bat might have foreseen the end, when once Mimi had put her
arm around the neck of Caffiard. Before the _deus ex machina_ knew what
he was about, he found his army of objections routed, horse, foot, and
dragoons, and had promised to be at the gare St. Lazare at eleven the
following morning.
And what a morning it was! Surely the bon Dieu must have loved Mimi an
atom better than other mortals, for in the blue-black crucible of the
night he fashioned a day as clear and glowing as a great jewel, and set
it, blazing with warm light and vivid color, foremost in the diadem of
the year. And it was something to see Mimi at the carriage window, with
Pierre at her side and her left hand in his, and in her right a huge
bouquet--Caffiard's contribution--while the _deus ex machina_ himself,
breathing like a happy hippopotamus, beamed upon the pair from the
opposite corner. So the train slipped past the fortifications, swung
through a trim suburb, slid smoothly out into the open country. It was a
Wednesday, and there was no holiday crowd to incommode them. They had
the compartment to themselves; and the half hour flew like six minutes,
said Mimi, when at last they came to a shuddering standstill, and two
guards hastened along the platform in opposite directions, one droning
"Poiss-y-y-y-y!" and the other shouting "Poiss'! Poiss'! Poiss'!" as if
he had been sneezing. It was an undertaking to get Caffiard out of the
carriage, just as it had been to get him in. But finally it was
accomplished, a whistle trilled from somewhere as if it had been a
bird, another wailed like a stepped-on kitten, the locomotive squealed
triumphantly, and the next minute the trio were alone in their glory.
It was a day that Caffiard never forgot. They breakfasted at once, so as
to have a longer afternoon. Mimi was guide and commander-in-chief, as
having been to the Esturgeon before, so the table was set upon the
terrasse overlooking the Seine, and there were radishes, and little
individual omelettes, and a famous matelote, which Monsieur Jarry
himself served with the air of a Lucullus, and, finally, a great dish of
quatre saisons, and, for each of the party, a squat brown pot of fresh
cream. And, moreover, no ordinaire, but St. Emilion, if you please, with
a tin-foil cap which had to be removed before one could draw the cork,
and a bottle of Source Badoit as well. And Caffiard, who had dined with
the Russian Ambassador on Monday and breakfasted with the Nuncio on
Tuesday, and been egregiously displeased with the fare in both
instances, consumed an unprecedented quantity of matelote, and went back
to radishes after he had eaten his strawberries and cream: while, to cap
the climax, Pierre paid the addition with a louis,--and gave _all_ the
change as a tip! But it was unheard-of!
Afterwards they engaged a boat, and, with much alarm on the part of
Mimi, and satirical comment from Caffiard, and severe admonitions to
prudence by Pierre, pushed out into the stream and headed for Villennes,
to the enormous edification of three small boys, who hung precariously
over the railing of the terrace above them, and called Caffiard a
captive balloon.
They made the three kilometres at a snail's pace, allowing the boat to
drift with the current for an hour at a time, and, now and again
creeping in under the willows at the water's edge until they were wholly
hidden from view, and the voice of Mimi singing was as that of some
river nixie invisible to mortal eyes. She sang "Bonsoir, Madame la
Lune," so sweetly and so sadly that Caffiard was moved to tears. It was
her favorite song, because--oh, because it was about Pierrot! And her
own Pierrot responded with a gay soldier ballad, a chanson de route
which he had picked up at the Noctambules; and even Caffiard sang--a
ridiculous ditty it was, which scored the English and went to a
rollicking air. They all shouted the refrain, convulsed with merriment
at the drollery of the sound:--
_"Qu'est ce qui quitte ses père et mère
Afin de s'en aller
S'faire taper dans le nez?
C'est le soldat d'Angleterre!
Dou-gle-di-gle-dum!
Avec les ba-a-a-alles dum-dum!"_
Caffiard was to leave them at Villennes after they should have taken
their apéritifs. They protested, stormed at him, scolded and cajoled by
turns, and called him a score of fantastic names--for by this time they
knew him intimately--as they sat in Monsieur Bodin's arbor and sipped
amer-menthe, but all in vain. Pierre had Mimi's hand, as always, and he
had kissed her a half-hundred times in the course of the afternoon. Mimi
had a way of shaking her hair out of her eyes with a curious little
backward jerk of her head when Pierre kissed her, and then looking at
him seriously, seriously, but smiling when he caught her at it. Caffiard
liked that. And Pierre had a trick of turning, as if to ask Mimi's
opinion, or divine even her unspoken wishes whenever a question came up
for decision--a choice of food or drink, or direction, or what-not. And
Caffiard liked _that_.
He looked across the table at them now, dreamily, through his cigarette
smoke.
"Pierrot," he said, after he had persuaded them to let him depart in
peace when the train should be due,--"Pierrot. Yes, that is it. You,
with your garret, and your painting, and your songs, and your black,
black sadness at one moment, and your laughter the next, and, above all,
your Pierrette, your bon-bon of a Pierrette:--you are Pierrot, the
spirit of Paris in powder and white muslin! Eigho! my children, what a
thing it is, la belle jeunesse! Tiens! you have given me a taste of it
to-day, and I thank you. I thought I had forgotten. But no, one never
forgets. It all comes back,--youth, and strength, and beauty, love, and
music, and laughter,--but only like a breath upon a mirror, my children,
only like a wind-ripple on a pool; for I am an old man."
He paused, looking up at the vine-leaves on the trellis-roof, and
murmured a few words of Mimi's song:--
_"Pierrette en songe va venir me voir:
Bonsoir, madame la lune!"_
Then his eyes came back to her face.
"I must be off," he said. "Why, what hast thou, little one? There are
tears in those two stars!"
"C'est vrai?" asked Mimi, smiling at him and then at Pierre, and
brushing her hand across her eyes, "c'est vrai? Well then, they are gone
as quickly as they came. Voilà! Without his tears Pierrot is not
Pierrot, and without Pierrot"--
She turned to Pierre suddenly, and buried her face on his shoulder.
"_Je t'aime!_" she whispered. "_Je t'aime!_"
[Illustration]
The Next Corner
ANTHONY CAZEBY was a man whom the felicitous combination of an
adventurous disposition, sufficient ready money, and a magnificent
constitution had introduced to many and various sensations, but he was
conscious that, so far as intensity went, no one of them all had
approached for a moment that with which he emerged from the doorway of
the Automobile Club, and, winking at the sting of the keen winter air,
looked out across the place de la Concorde, with its globes of light,
swung, like huge pearls on invisible strings, across the haze of the
January midnight. He paused for a moment, as if he would allow his
faculties to obtain a full and final grasp of his situation, and
motioned aside the trim little club chasseur who stood before him, with
one cotton-gloved hand stretched out expectantly for a supposititious
carriage-check.
"Va, mon petit, je vais à pied!"
Afoot! Cazeby smiled to himself at the tone of sudden caprice which rang
in his voice, and, turning his fur collar high up about his ears, swung
off rapidly toward the Cours la Reine. After all, the avenue d'Eylau was
only an agreeable stroll's length distant. Why not go home afoot? But
then, on the other hand, why go home at all? As this thought leaped
suddenly at Cazeby's throat out of the void of the great unpremeditated,
he caught his breath, stopped suddenly in the middle of the driveway,
and then went on more slowly, thinking hard.
It had been that _rarissima avis_ of social life, even in Paris, a
perfect dinner. Cazeby had found himself wondering, at more than one
stage of its smooth and imposing progress, how the Flints could afford
to do it. But on each recurrence of the thought he dismissed it with a
little frown of vexation. If there was one thing more than another upon
which Cazeby prided himself, it was originality of thought, word, and
deed, and he was annoyed to find himself, even momentarily, on a mental
level with the gossips of the American and English colonies, whose time
is equally divided between wondering how the Choses can afford to do
what they do, and why the Machins cannot afford to do what they leave
undone.
People had said many things of Hartley Flint, and still more of his
wife, but no one had ever had the ignorance or the perversity to accuse
them of inefficiency in the matter of a dinner. Moreover, on this
particular occasion, they were returning the hospitality of the Baroness
Klemftt, who had, at the close of the Exposition, impressed into her
service the chef of the Roumanian restaurant, and whose dinners were, in
consequence, the wonder and despair of four foreign colonies. After her
latest exploit Hartley Flint had remarked to his wife that it was "up to
them to make good," which, being interpreted, was to say that it was at
once his duty and his intention to repay the Baroness in her own
sterling coin. The fact that the men of the party afterwards commended
Hartley's choice of wines, and that the women expressed the opinion that
"Kate Flint looked _really_ pretty!" would seem to be proof positive
that the operation of "making good" had been an unqualified success.
Now, Cazeby was wondering whether he had actually enjoyed it all. Under
the circumstances it seemed to him incredible, and yet he could not
recall a qualm of uneasiness from the moment when the maître d'hôtel had
thrown open the doors of the private dining room, until the Baroness had
smiled at her hostess out of a cloud of old Valenciennes, and said, "Now
there are _two_ of us who give impeccable dinners, Madame Flint." Even
now, even facing his last ditch, Cazeby was conscious of a little thrill
of self-satisfaction. He had said the score of clever things which each
of his many hostesses expected of him, and had told with great effect
his story of the little German florist, which had grown, that season,
under the persuasive encouragement of society's applause, from a brief
anecdote into a veritable achievement of Teutonic dialect. Also, he had
worn a forty franc orchid, and had left it in his coffee-cup because it
had begun to wilt. In brief, he had been Anthony Cazeby at his
extraordinary best, a mixture of brilliancy and eccentricity, without
which, as Mrs. Flint was wont to say, no dinner was complete.
But the sublime and the ridiculous are not the only contrasting
conditions that lie no further than a step apart, and Cazeby was
painfully conscious of having, in the past five minutes, crossed the
short interval which divides gay from grave. Reduced to its lowest
terms, his situation lay in his words to the little chasseur. With the
odor of the rarest orchid to be found in Vaillant-Rozeau's whole
establishment yet clinging to his lapel, Anthony Cazeby was going home
on foot because the fare from the Concorde to the avenue d'Eylau was one
franc fifty, and one franc fifty precisely ninety centimes more than he
possessed in the world. For a moment he straightened himself, threw back
his head, and looked up at the dull saffron of the low-hanging sky, in
an attempt to realize this astounding fact, and then went back to his
thinking.
Well, it was not surprising. The life of a popular young diplomat with
extravagant tastes is not conducive to economy, and the forty thousand
dollars which had come to Cazeby at the beginning of his twenty-eighth
year had proved but a bad second best in the struggle with Parisian
gayety. His bibelots, his servants, Auteuil, Longchamp, his baccarat at
the Prince de Tréville's, a dancer at the Folies-Marigny, Monte Carlo,
Aix, Trouville,--they had all had their share, and now the piper was
waiting to be paid and the exchequer was empty. It was an old story.
Other men of his acquaintance had done the same, but they had had some
final resource. The trouble was, as Cazeby had already noted, that, in
his case, the final resource was not, as in theirs, pecuniary. Quite on
the contrary, it was a tidy little weapon, of Smith and Wesson make,
which lay in the upper right hand drawer of his marqueterie desk. He had
looked long at it that same afternoon, with all his worldly wealth, in
the shape of forty-two francs sixty, spread out beside it. That was
before he had taken a fiacre to Vaillant-Rozeau's.
At the very moment when Cazeby was contemplating these doubtful assets,
a grim old gentleman was seated at another desk, three thousand miles
away, engaged upon a calculation of the monthly profits derived from a
wholesale leather business. But Cazeby père was one of the hopeless
persons who believe in economy. He was of the perverted opinion that
money hardly come by should be thoughtfully spent, or, preferably,
invested in government bonds, and he had violent prejudices against
"industrials," games of chance, and young men who preferred the gayety
of a foreign capital to the atmosphere of "the Swamp." Also he was very
rich. But Anthony had long since ceased to regard his father as anything
more than a chance relation. He could have told what would be the result
of a frank confession of his extremity as accurately as if the avowal
had been already made. There would have been some brief reference to the
sowing of oats and their reaping, to the making of a metaphorical bed
and the inevitable occupancy thereof, and to other proverbial
illustrations which, in a financial sense, are more ornamental than
useful,--and nothing more. The essential spark of sympathy had been
lacking between these two since the moment when the most eminent
physician in New York had said, "It is a boy, sir,--but--we cannot hope
to save the mother." The fault may have lain on the one side, or the
other, or on both, or on neither; but certain it is that to Anthony's
imagination Cazeby senior had never appealed in the light of a final
resource.
Somehow, in none of his calculations had the idea of invoking assistance
ever played a part. Naturally, as a reasoning being, he had foreseen the
present crisis for some months, but at the time when the inevitable
catastrophe first became clear to him it was already too late to regain
his balance, since the remainder of his inheritance was so pitifully
small that any idea of retrieving his fortunes through its
instrumentality was simply farcical. The swirl of the rapids, as he had
then told himself, had already caught his boat. All that was left to do
was to go straight on to the sheer of the fall, with his pennant flying
and himself singing at the helm. Then, on the brink, a well-placed
bullet--no bungling for Anthony Cazeby!--and the next day people would
be talking of the shocking accident which had killed him in the act of
cleaning his revolver, and saying the usual things about a young man
with a brilliant future before him and everything in life for which to
live.
And this plan he had carried out in every detail--save the last, to
which he was now come; and his was the satisfying conviction that not
one of the brilliant, careless men and women, among whom he lived, and
moved, and had his being, suspected for a moment that the actual
circumstances differed in the least from the outward appearances. He
thought it all over carefully now, and there was no play in the entire
game that he felt he would have liked to have changed.
Sentiment had no part in the makeup of Anthony Cazeby. Lacking from
early childhood the common ties of home affection, and by training and
profession a diplomat, he added to a naturally undemonstrative nature
the non-committal suavity of official poise. But that was not all. He
had never been known to be ill at ease. This was something which gained
him a reputation for studious self-control. As a matter of fact it was
due to nothing of the sort. No one had ever come fairly at the root of
his character except Cazeby père, who once said, in a fit of passion,
"You don't care a brass cent, sir, whether you live and are made
President of the United States, or die and are eternally damned!" And
that was exactly the point.
Something of all this had passed through Cazeby's mind, when he was
suddenly aroused to an appreciation of his whereabouts by the sound of a
voice, to find that the curious instinct of direction which underlies
advanced inebriety and profound preoccupation alike, had led him up the
avenue du Trocadéro, and across the place, and that he had already
advanced some little way along the avenue d'Eylau in the direction of
his apartment. The street was dimly lighted, but, just behind him, the
windows of a tiny wine-shop gave out a subdued glow, and from within
came the sound of a violin. Then Cazeby's attention came around to the
owner of the voice. This was a youngish man of medium stature, in the
familiar street dress of a French laborer, jacket and waistcoat of dull
blue velveteen, peg-top trousers of heavy corduroy, a crimson knot at
his throat, and a dark tam o'shanter pulled low over one ear. As their
eyes met, he apparently saw that Cazeby had not heard his first remark,
and so repeated it.
"I have need of a drink!"
There was nothing of the beggar in his tone or manner. Both were
threatening, rather; and, as soon as he had spoken, he thrust his lower
jaw forward, in the fashion common to the thug of any and every
nationality when the next move is like to be a blow. But, for once,
these manifestations of hostility failed signally of effect. Cazeby was
the last person in the world to select as the object of sudden attack,
with the idea that panic would make him easy prey. In his present state
of mind he went further than preserving his equanimity: he was even
faintly amused. It was not that he did not comprehend the other's
purpose, but, to his way of thinking, there was something distinctly
humorous in the idea of holding up a man with only sixty centimes to his
name, and menacing him with injury, when he himself was on his way to
the upper right hand drawer of the marqueterie desk.
"I have need of a drink," repeated the other, coming a step nearer.
"Thou art not deaf, at least?"
"No," said Cazeby, pleasantly, "no, I am not deaf, and I, too, have
need of a drink. Shall we take it together?" And, without waiting for a
reply, he turned and stepped through the doorway of the little wineshop.
The Frenchman hesitated, shrugged his shoulders with an air of complete
bewilderment, and, after an instant also entered the shop and placed
himself at the small table where Cazeby was already seated.
"A vitriol for me," he said.
Cazeby had not passed three years in Paris for nothing. He received this
remarkable request with the unconcern of one to whom the slang of the
exterior boulevards is sufficiently familiar, and, as the proprietor
leaned across the nickled slab of his narrow counter with an air of
interrogation, duplicated his companion's order.
"Deux vitriols!"
The proprietor, vouchsafing the phrase a grin of appreciation, lumbered
heavily around to the table, filled two small glasses from a bottle of
cheap cognac, and stood awaiting payment, hands on hips.
"Di-ze sous," he said.
There was no need to search for the exact amount. Cazeby spun his
fifty-centime piece upon the marble, added his remaining two sous by way
of pourboire, and disposed of the brandy at a gulp.
"Have you also need of a cigarette?" he inquired, politely, tendering
the other his case.
For some minutes, as they smoked, the diplomat and the vagabond took
stock of each other in silence. In many ways they were singularly alike.
There was in both the same irony of lip line, the same fair chiseling of
chin and nostril and brow, the same weariness of eye. The difference was
one of dress and bearing alone, and, in those first moments of mutual
analysis, Cazeby realized that there was about this street-lounger a
vague air of the gentleman, a subtle suggestion of good birth and
breeding, which even his slouching manner and coarse speech were not
wholly able to conceal: and his guest was conscious that in Cazeby he
had to deal with no mere society puppet, but with one in whom the
limitations of position had never wholly subdued the devil-may-care
instincts of the vagabond. The one was a finished model of a man of the
world, the other a caricature, but the clay was the same.
"I am also hungry," said the latter suddenly.
"In that respect," responded Cazeby, in the same tone of even
politeness, "I am, unfortunately, unable to assist you, unless you will
accept the hospitality of my apartment. It is but a step, and I am
rather an expert on bacon and eggs. Also," he added, falling into the
idiom of the faubourgs, "there is a means there of remedying the dryness
of the sponge in one's throat. My name is Antoine."
"I am Bibi-la-Raie," said the other shortly. Then he continued, with
instinctive suspicion, "It is a strange fashion thou hast of introducing
a type to these gentlemen."