Beaux-Arts, neither luxuriously nor yet insufficiently furnished. It
was Jean's good fortune to have a father who believed in him--not a
usual condition of mind in a provincial merchant whose son displays an
unaccountable partiality for architecture--and, what was more to the
point, who could afford to demonstrate his confidence by remittances,
which were inspiring, if not on the score of magnitude, at least on that
of regularity. And, since freedom from pecuniary solicitude is the
surest guarantee of a cheerful spirit, there was no more diligent pupil
at the Boîte, no blither comrade in idle hours,--above all, no more
loyal friend, in sun or shadow, throughout the length and breadth of the
Quartier, than little Jean le Gai, as he was called by those who loved
him, and whom he loved.
That was why the comrades were at a loss to understand his friendship
for Grégoire Caubert. Had the latter been one of themselves, a type of
the schools, in that fact alone, whatever his peculiarities, would have
lain a reason for the association. But, to all intents and purposes, he
was of another world. His similarity to Jean and to themselves began and
ended with his costume. For the rest he was silent and reserved,
courting no confidence and giving none, unknowing and unknown to the
haunts they frequented,--the Deux Magots, the Escholiers, the Taverne,
the Bullier, and Madame Roupiquet's in the rue de Beaune, and the Rouge
on Thursday nights. Jean le Gai, when questioned as to the doings of
Grégoire, seemed to reflect something of his friend's reserve. He
admitted that the other wrote: he even went so far as to prophesy that
some day Grégoire would be famous. Further, he made no admissions.
"Diable!" he said. "What does it matter? He goes his way--I go mine. And
if we choose to live together, whose concern is it then, I ask you?
Fichez-moi la paix, vous autres!"
So popular curiosity went unsatisfied, so far as Grégoire was concerned,
and the apparently uncongenial ménage came, in time, to be looked upon
as one of the unexplained mysteries of the Quartier,--one, for the rest,
which made no particular difference to any one save the two immediately
concerned.
But if Jean made no admissions as to Grégoire, it was not for lack of
sufficient knowledge. They had met, as men meet in the Quartier,--as
bubbles meet in a stream, and, for reasons not apparent, are drawn
together by an irresistible attraction, and fuse into one larger,
brighter bubble than either has been before. For little Jean Fraissigne,
whose exquisses were the wonder of the School, and whose projets had
already come to be photographed and sold in the shops of the rue
Bonaparte and the quai Conti, believed in his heart that architecture
was as nothing compared to literature, and Grégoire, whose long, uphill
struggle had been unaccompanied by comradely admiration or even
encouragement, found indescribable comfort, in the hour of his success,
in the faith and approbation of the friend who alone, of all men, knew
his secret,--knew that the Réné de Lys of the "Chansons de Danaé" and
the "Voyage de Tristan" of which all Paris was talking, was none other
than himself--Grégoire Caubert, on whose wrist the siren of absinthe had
laid a hand that was not to be shaken off, and whom she was leading, if
by the paths of subtlest fancy and almost miraculous creative faculty,
yet toward an end inevitable on which he did not dare to dwell.
To Jean, healthy, rational, and cheerful as a young terrier, much that
Grégoire said and did was totally incomprehensible, but what he did not
understand he set down, with conviction, to the eccentricity of genius.
The long nights which he spent alone, sleeping sanely in their bedroom
in the rue de Seine, while Grégoire's cot stood empty beside him, and
Grégoire himself was tramping the streets of Paris; the return of his
friend in the first faint light of dawn, pale-faced and swaying; the
succeeding hours which, despite his exhaustion, he spent at his desk,
feverishly writing, and tossing the pages from him, one by one, until
the floor was strewn with them on all sides; finally, his heavy slumber
far into the afternoon,--all this, to Jean, was but part and parcel of
that marvelous thing called literature. He returned at seven to find
that Grégoire had prepared a wonderful little meal, and was walking up
and down the floor, unevenly, absinthe in hand, awaiting his arrival.
In the two hours which followed lay the keynote of their sympathy. It
was then that Grégoire would read his work of the early morning hour,
to Jean, curled up on the divan, with his hands clasped behind his head
and his eyes round and wide with delight and admiration. What things
they were, those fancies that Grégoire had pursued and caught, like
night-moths, in the streets of Paris, while stupid folk were sleeping!
And how he read them, Grégoire, with his flushed face lit with
inspiration, and his eyes flaming with enthusiasm! If only he would not
drink absinthe, thought little Jean, and said so, timidly at first, and
then more earnestly, as, little by little, the marks of excess grew more
plain in his friend. But Grégoire made a joke of this--he who always
joked--and in time, Jean came to acquiesce. For he never wholly
understood--until afterwards.
So, when nine struck, it was understood that they parted company till
the following evening. Jean brought out his drawing board, his T square,
and all their attendant paraphernalia, and toiled at his calques with
infinite patience and unerring accuracy, until midnight; and Grégoire,
having corrected his manuscript here and there, gnawing savagely at his
pencil the while, inclosed it in one of his long envelopes, scrawled
"Rédaction du Journal" upon it, stamped it, and went out into the night
to mail the old, and seek new moths. And this was all there was to the
comradeship which mystified the Quartier, save that the love of Jean for
Grégoire and of Grégoire for Jean was as deep and unfaltering as the
current of the eternal Seine--and, if anything, more silent!
Jean wound up Le Pochard stealthily, on the landing outside the
apartment door, and, entering, placed it suddenly upon the table under
the very nose of Grégoire, who stood, sipping his absinthe, in the
centre of the room. Le Pochard rocked and swayed, ticking like a little
clock, and drinking cup after cup of his imaginary beverage, as if his
life depended upon the quantity consumed. Convulsed with merriment at
the performance of the preposterous creature, Jean le Gai lay prone upon
the divan, kneading the cushions with his fists and kicking his heels
against the floor, and Grégoire, a slow smile curling his thin,
sensitive lips, seemed to forget even his absinthe until the toy's
energy slackened and he paused, with the bottle shaking in his hand, and
his eyes, as usual, bent upon the ground. Then--"Eh b'en--quoi?" said
Grégoire, looking up at his friend.
"Mais c'est toi!" burst out the little architect in an ecstasy. "It is
thou to the life, my Grégoire! Remark the blouse--what?--and the hat,
sale pompier!--and the checked grimpant, name of a pipe! But it is thy
brother, Le Pochard!--thy twin--thou, thyself!"
And seizing the glass from Grégoire's hand, he carefully filled Le
Pochard's cup with absinthe, and set him reeling and swaggering again,
so that the immoral little animal spilled the liquid on his blouse, and
presently fell headlong, totally overcome, with his nose pressed flat
against the table.
Thereafter, it was a comradeship of three instead of two. It was quite
in accord with the whimsically fanciful nature of Grégoire that he
should take Le Pochard into his affections, and even call him "brother"
and "cher confrère." He treated him, did Grégoire, with marked deference
and studied non-observance of his besetting weakness, and he expected
and received from Le Pochard a like respect and indulgence in return.
That, at least, was how he described their relations to Jean, and Jean,
curled up upon the divan, was never tired of the droll pretense, but
would laugh night after night till the tears came, at the common tact
and the mutual courtesy of Grégoire and Le Pochard.
Linked by this new, if unstable, bond of sympathy, neither of the
friends understood, during the months that followed, that their paths,
which had so long lain parallel, were gradually but inevitably
diverging. Jean was now wrapped heart and soul in the competition for
the Prix de Rome, and, as he said himself, en charrette eternally. Even
the work of his comrade, which formerly had held him spell-bound, lost
for him, little by little, much of its compellant charm. His nimble
mind, busy with the stern, symmetrical lines of columns and the
intricate proportioning of capitals, drifted imperceptibly away from its
one-time appreciation of pure imagery. He returned later at night from
the atelier, consumed the meal they ate in common with growing
impatience, and was busy with his calques again before Grégoire had
fairly finished his coffee. The evening readings, grown shorter and
shorter, were finally abandoned altogether, and, oftener than not, Jean
was totally oblivious to the presence of Grégoire, correcting his
manuscript at the little desk, or his noiseless departure with the
stamped envelope under his arm. Had he been told, he would have denied
his defection with the scorn bred by conviction. It was not that he
loved his comrade less, but only that the growing promise of the Prix de
Rome lay, like the marvel of dawn, on the horizon of the immediate
future, blinding his eyes to all beside. For Jean le Gai was finding
himself, and in the crescent light of that new and wonderful discovery
whatever had been bright before grew tawdry.
Only one evidence remained of what had been. Le Pochard, with his absurd
inanity, was yet a feature of every dinner in the rue de Seine, and
because Grégoire invented daily some new drollery in connection with
their senseless toy, Jean was unaware that things were no longer the
same,--that his friend was thinner and more nervous, that the circles
had deepened under his eyes, that he said no word of his work. They
laughed together at Le Pochard, and laughed again at their own
amusement. So the days went by and still their paths diverged,--Jean's
toward the sungilt hills of promise and prosperity, Grégoire's toward
the valley of shadow that a man must tread alone.
Despite his proclivities, neither foresaw the end of Le Pochard. So
gradual was his decline toward utter degradation that the varnish was
gone from his narrow boots and his round, weak face, and his simple
attire was frayed and worn, before they had remarked the change. Then,
one night, as Grégoire wound him, the key turned futilely in the spring.
Placed in his accustomed position on the table, Le Pochard made one
feeble gesture of surrender with his bottle, one unavailing effort to
raise his absinthe to his lips, and, reeling dizzily, crashed down upon
the floor, his debauches done with forever.
It was a curious thing that, in the face of this absurdity, neither of
the comrades smiled. In some unaccountable fashion Le Pochard had come
to be so much a part of their association that in his passing there was
less of farce than tragedy. And Jean, looking across at Grégoire, saw
for the first time the pitiful change that had crept into the face of
his friend, the utter weariness where restless energy had been, the
dullness of the eyes wherein had played imagination, like a
will-o'-the-wisp above the slough of destiny. And Grégoire, looking
across at Jean, knew that the moment had come, and dropped his glance,
ashamed, fingering the tattered clothes of Le Pochard.
"One might have expected it," said Jean, with a smile that was not a
smile. "I suppose we must forgive him his faults, now that he is gone.
_De mortuis nil nisi bonum!_"
Then, as Grégoire made no reply, he added,
"I shall not work to-night. I am tired. Que veux-tu? I have been doing
too much. So we will sit by the fire, n'est ce pas, vieux? And thou
shalt read to me as before. Dieu! It is a long time since the moths have
shown their wings!"
In the tiny grate the cannel coal snapped and spat fretfully, and Jean,
buried in the largest chair, winked at the sparks, and, furtively, from
the corners of his brown eyes, watched Grégoire reading, half-heartedly,
with the lamp-light cutting sharply across his thin cheek and his
temples, on which the veins stood singularly out.
He was no critic, little Jean le Gai, yet even he knew that something
had touched and bruised the wings of this latest moth that Grégoire had
pursued and caught while stupid folk were sleeping, so that it was not,
as had been the others, downed with the shifting brilliance of many
unimagined hues, but dull and sombre, like the look he had surprised in
the face of his friend. And so subtly keyed were the strings of their
unspoken sympathy that night, that a sense of the other's feeling stole
in upon Grégoire long before the manuscript was finished, and suddenly
he cast it from him into the grate, where the little flames caught at
it, and wrapped it round, and sucked out its life, exulting, until it
lay blackened and dying, writhing on the coals.
"Why?" said Jean. But he knew.
"Because," answered Grégoire slowly, with his eyes upon the shrunken,
faintly whispering ashes of his pages, whereat the sparks gnawed with
insatiable greed, "because, my little one, it is finished. What I have
done I shall never do again. Never didst thou wholly understand--least
of all in these last days when thy work absorbed thee. If one is to
catch night-moths with such a tender touch, and preserve them for other
men to see so carefully, that no one little glint of radiance may be
missing from their wings, one has need of a clear eye and of a steady
hand. Neither is mine. My father, of whom I have never spoken to
thee,--my father, who left me this gift of trapping the thoughts that
others see not as they fly, yet love and prize when they are caught and
pinned upon the page, yet left me a companion curse,--the curse of
absinthe, little Jean, that is not to be gainsaid. For as the gift was
beautiful, so was it also frail, and as the curse was subtle, so was it
also strong. I have seen the end--long, long. Now it is here. My work is
finished. The curse has knocked at the door of my body, and, at the
signal, the gift has flown forth from the window of my soul."
He paused, and pausing, smiled.
"Thou didst most nearly understand me, Jean," he continued, "in buying
Le Pochard. For in truth, he was my brother--my twin--my soul, in the
semblance of a toy! How we have laughed at him! Yet all along I have
seen myself in that senseless little man of tin. Is it fanciful?
Peut-être bien! But, now that he is gone, I see that I must go,
too,--and in the same way, my Jean, in the same way,--with my absinthe
in my hand and the key of inspiration turning uselessly in the broken
spring of my heart!"
He rose suddenly, with a shiver, and looked down at Jean le Gai. For an
instant he touched him on the hair, and then he was gone into the night,
leaving the little architect gazing, wide-eyed and mute, at the
crinkling ashes of the last, unworthiest moth of all.
During the days that followed, Le Pochard stood upon the mantel-corner.
They no longer touched him, but left him, as it were, a monument to his
own folly.
There was no further trace in Grégoire's manner of the mood which had
loosed his tongue on the night of his last reading. To Jean, who, in his
simplicity stood ready with comfort and encouragement, he seemed to be
in need of neither. Plainly, what he had said was but a phase of that
strange imagination which had dictated the exquisite pathos of his
"Danaé" and his "Tristan;" and this one thing little Jean had
learned,--that his friend lived the moods he wrote, and that oftentimes,
when what he said was seemingly most personal, he was posing for his own
pen--a painter in speech, drawing from his reflection in a mirror
opposite. So the vague alarm aroused by Grégoire's words died down, and
Jean plunged once more into his work.
In those last days of the competition his projet, laboriously builded,
detail by detail, leaped into completion with a suddenness startling
even to himself. He knew that it was good,--knew so without the
surprising enthusiasm of his comrades at the atelier, and the still more
surprising commendation of his patron, the great Laloux himself, whose
policy was _nil admirari_, whose frown a habit, and whose "Bon!" a
miracle. But even Jean le Gai, with all his buoyant optimism, was
unprepared in conviction for those words which reverberated, to his ears
like thunder, beneath the dome of the Institut.
"Prix de Rome--Jean Fraissigne--Atelier Laloux!"
Would Grégoire _never_ come? He asked himself the question a hundred
times as he paced the floor of their living-room an hour before dinner,
exulting in the cold roast chicken and the champagne, and the huge
Maréchale Niel rose which he had purchased for the occasion. For he was
determined, was Jean le Gai, that Grégoire should be the first to know.
Was it not Grégoire who had encouraged him all along, who had prophesied
success when as yet the projet was no more than an exquisse exquisse,
who had laughed down Jean's forebodings, and magnified Jean's hopes a
hundred-fold? Yes, evidently Grégoire must be the first to know, before
even a bleu should be sent to Avignon to gladden the heart of Fraissigne
père!
But when Grégoire came, there was no need to tell him after all. For it
was the chicken that shouted Jean's news--the chicken, and the
champagne, and the great yellow rose, and, most of all, the face of Jean
himself. So it was that Grégoire held out his long, thin arms,
wide-spread, and that into them rushed Jean, to be hugged and patted, as
he gabbled some things that there was such a thing as understanding and
many more that there was not.
"Rome--Rome, think of it! And the paternel--but he will die of joy! Ah,
mon vieux,--Rome! The dreams--the hopes--all I have wished for--and
now--and now--Ah, mon vieux, mon vieux!"
And so again and again, clamoring incoherently, while Grégoire, holding
him tight, could only pat and pat, and say, over and over,--
"It is well, my little brother! My little brother, it is very, very
well!"
They dined like princes, these two, pledging each other, laughing,
singing, shouting. Never had Jean le Gai so well deserved his name,
never had Grégoire been so whimsically droll. Even Le Pochard was
restored to his old position and coaxed to repeat his former antics. But
it was all in vain. The key refused to catch the spring, and, replaced
upon the table, Le Pochard only nodded once or twice with profound
melancholy, and stared at little Jean out of his round eyes. Once, Jean
thought he caught in the face of his friend a hint of the sadness of
that other night, but when he looked again the sadness, if sadness it
were, was gone. Grégoire filled his glass, and pledged him anew with a
laugh.
"Rome, mon petit frère--Rome!"
At nine, they went out together, Jean to dispatch his bleu and join the
comrades at the Taverne--for this was a night to be celebrated with
songs and many drained demis--and Grégoire, who knew where?
Who knew where? Only the Seine, perhaps, sulking past the rampart on
which he leaned, thinking, thinking, until the gaunt dawn crept up, like
a sick man from his bed, behind the towers of Notre Dame; and the
shutters of the shops on the quai Conti came rattling down, and the
street cries went shrilly through the thin morning air: "Rac'modeur
d'faïence et d'por-or-celaine!" or "'Archand de rôbinets! Tureetutu,
tureetututututu!" Then Grégoire went slowly back to the rue de Seine.
Jean spent the succeeding days in a whirl of excitement. There were
calls to be made, farewell suppers to be eaten, and all the preparation
for departure to be superintended. Fraissigne père sent a joyful letter,
and in the letter a substantial draft, so that Jean had two new
complets, and shirts, and socks, and shoes, and a brilliantly varnished
trunk with his name and address painted in black letters on the
end,--"J. Fraissigne, Villa Medici, Rome." It was magnificent! In this
and a packing case he stowed his clothes and his household gods, though
when the latter had been collected, the little apartment in the rue de
Seine looked pitifully bare. There were dark squares on the faded red
wall-paper, and clean circles in the dust of the shelves, where his
pictures and casts and little ornaments had been, but Grégoire only
laughed and said that the place had been too crowded before, and that
the long-needed house-cleaning was no longer an impossibility.
So, before they realized the fact, the moment of parting was upon them,
and the sapin, with Jean's luggage on top, stood waiting at the door.
The concierge, wiping her hands upon her blue-checked apron, came out to
bid her favorite lodger good-by. A little throng of curious idlers
paused on the narrow sidewalk, gaping at the new trunk with the glaring
lettering. The cocher was already untying the nose-bag in which his lean
brown horse had been nuzzling for fifteen minutes. And, on the curb, arm
linked in arm, the two comrades stood watching him, with no courage to
meet each other's eyes. For each had a thousand things to say and never
a word in which to say so much as one.
At the end, as their hands met, it was only a commonplace that came to
Jean's tongue.
"Thou wilt write me, vieux? And in four years--ce qui va vite, du
reste!--we shall be together once more!"
In four years--in four years--in four years! The words beat dully at
Grégoire's temples, as he watched the cab swing round the corner of the
Institut toward the quai Malaquais, with Jean's handkerchief fluttering
at the window of the portière. Four years--four years--four years! How
easy it was to say for one who did not know that the end had come,--that
the moths of fancy that fly by night must be caught by others now, that
the siren of absinthe was standing ready to claim her own!
Grégoire mounted the stairs slowly, unlocked the door, and stepped into
the familiar room, dim now in the last faint light of day. His absinthe
stood upon the table, and he took it up, and paused, looking about him.
Presently he went forward to the mantel, and, laying one hand upon it,
bent forward, peering at a little photograph of Jean which leaned
against the mirror. The woodwork jarred under his touch, and Le Pochard
in his corner stirred, ticked feebly, and strove to raise his cup to his
lips. Wheeling at the sound, Grégoire met the eyes of the dissipated
little toy for a full minute, motionless and silent. Then with a sob, he
hurled his glass into the grate, where it was shivered into a hundred
fragments, and flung himself on his knees by the divan, with his face
buried in his hands.
"Mon frèrot!" he murmured, "my little brother--help me--help me to be
strong."
On the mantle, Le Pochard bent his head and gazed shamefacedly upon the
ground.
For his reign was at an end.
[Illustration]
A Latter-Day Lucifer
THE distance between them is far less than is commonly supposed. In
fact, they are separated only by a parti-wall. But there is a vast
difference in their exteriors, Heaven being gay with silver paint and
stucco cherubs, and illuminated by a huge arc-light with a white globe,
and Hell all red, with a monster's grinning mouth for entrance, and a
ruby lamp.
The two cabarets stand on the boulevard de Clichy, side by side, and,
when one is passing through Paris on a Cook ticket, good for a two
weeks' stay, one is taken by an obliging friend of the Colony to see
them, and so is enabled to return to the States with the pleasing
conviction of having had a glimpse of the true life of Montmartre,--the
which is so artistic, and Bohemian, and all that.