way, chers damnés, to the Hall of the Infernal Visions!" and the clients
were rising from their tables, and crowding out like sheep through a
narrow door to the right. Almost immediately the place was empty, save
for the fallen angel and two other demons, clearing away the liqueur
glasses, and setting the stools in place. It was the dreamt-of moment.
Maxime walked carelessly toward the door.
In Le Ciel, the long table was full from end to end. The high-priest in
his pulpit was delivering his accustomed discourse with extreme
satisfaction, and the head angel making the round of the room, bearing
the golden pig upon the pole. The angels, each in his place, abode the
moment of the clients' exodus into the Hall of the Celestial Visions,
which was coincident with the semi-hourly harvest of pourboires. In
particular, their eyes were fixed upon a party of American tourists,
under direction of a uniformed guide. These were worthy of comment, and
received it. It appeared that the thin lady with the loose cloth costume
was an empty bed ticking. There were other remarks, but this, from
Gustave Robine, was the most successful. However, there were the
pourboires to be considered, so the angels spoke in whispers.
Of a sudden, the calm of Heaven was broken by an appalling sound,
something midway between a shriek and a bark, and on the end of the
table nearest the door appeared a terrible form, black-bearded and all
in scarlet, with two long feathers nodding from his cap, and a polished
two-pronged pitchfork brandished in one upraised hand. An instant he
paused, superbly statuesque, his eyes blazing, an incarnation of
demoniac fury. And, as if the sensation produced by his dramatic
entrance were not sufficient, the newcomer received unexpected support
from the thin lady in loose cloth costume, who, upon his appearance,
promptly exclaimed "Good land!" and fell backward off her stool upon the
floor.
Then Bedlam broke loose. The doorway of Le Ciel is less than a metre in
width, and when a score of affrighted tourists, and seven angels, and
six French students with their grisettes, and a high-priest, and two
corpulent Germans, and a sexton, and Gustave Robine are suddenly and
simultaneously imbued with a desire to sample the air of the boulevard
de Clichy, confusion is apt to result. There were shrieks and groans,
protestations, oaths in three languages, a wild chaos of legs and arms,
wings, white tunics, traveling caps, tweed suits, and golden stools,
and over all pranced the crimson form of the invader, whirling up and
down the table with unearthly cries, and kicking the liqueur glasses and
little saucers in every direction. They were all agreed, both mortals
and celestials, in believing him a madman, and agreed, also, in thinking
the pavement of the boulevard a thing greatly to be desired. The demon
paused presently, and watched them struggling in a frenzied mass about
the door, and then he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.
For l'L Majuscule had not wasted the early hours of the evening in
L'Enfer, and he knew now that the rear entrances of Heaven and Hell gave
upon a common court, full of barrels, and empty bottles, and discarded
properties, and even as the panic he had created was at its height, he
had made the circuit, and was bustling into his original disguise.
The doorkeeper of L'Enfer, on the outlook for clients, had stared in
stupefaction as Maxime, in his demon's garb, darted past him and plunged
into the entrance of Le Ciel, and when, a moment later, his ears were
startled by the pandemonium inside the rival cabaret, he had first,
with commendable presence of mind, shouted "Au feu! A l'assassin! Au
secours!" to his fellows in L'Enfer, and then repeated the cry at the
top of his lungs on the curb of the boulevard. So it was that the
clients and personnel of Heaven and Hell reached the sidewalk almost
simultaneously. Gustave, halberd in hand, came full upon a demon barring
his path, and, mistaking him for the original intruder, fell upon him
furiously. Other demons came to their companion's aid, other angels to
Gustave's, and immediately fourscore individuals were battling
desperately, without knowing or caring why. Agents appeared as if by
magic, screaming for reinforcement, and pulling fainting women out of
the mêlée by their heads and heels. Spectators ran up by hundreds, and
formed a rampart around the fray. And, to add chaos to confusion, a
detachment of sapeurs-pompiers presently drove up in a red wagon, their
horn hee-hawing like an impatient donkey. Last of all, a thin gentleman
with preposterously large feet, black-bearded, spectacled, and wearing
an excessively checked suit, came calmly out of L'Enfer, shouldered his
way to a position of vantage in the throng, and stood, smiling down upon
the havoc.
Peace was restored. But a half dozen of the combatants were already in
the hands of the police, and were hurried away to the poste, protesting
volubly. Among these were Gustave Robine, in a pitiful state of
demoralization, and the doorkeeper of L'Enfer, and the director of Le
Ciel, with his huits reflets, crushed to an unrecognizable mass,
clutched desperately in his hand.
Then every second person in the crowd explained to his neighbor how it
all occurred, and, among others, a stalwart workingman proceeded to
enlighten the spectacled gentleman at his side.
"It appears there was a madman," he said. "Bon sang! What places, these
cabarets--what infected boxes, name of a dog!"
"Ah, ça!" replied the other, rolling his r's in speaking, in the fashion
of the South, and leering at the back of the struggling director. "But
then such an affair is in the chapter of variety, and as for me, I care
less for a life without variety than does a fish for an apple!"
[Illustration]
Poire!
LIEUTENANT EUGENE DROUIN slid from his saddle with a little grunt,
slipped his arm through the bridle-rein, and then, with his riding crop,
rapped smartly on the round, tin-topped table nearest to him. At the
summons, a small square door on the left of the archway snapped open,
and a stumpy waiter, shaped like a domino, appeared abruptly on the
sill.
"Froid!" shouted the officer.
The domino waiter made a vague gesture in the air with one fat hand, and
then vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, closing the door behind
him with a slam. If he had but seen fit to observe "Cuckoo!" the whole
affair--the sort of châlet from which he emerged, the small square door,
and his own performance--would have borne a remarkable resemblance to a
Swiss clock striking one.
Lieutenant Drouin detached an end of the rein from the snaffle-bar,
knotted it about the back of one chair and flung himself into another.
"Poof!" he said, and lit a cigarette.
It was exactly one o'clock, and the Pré Catalan was deserted, save for a
half dozen cats of various breeds and colors, chasing each other about
under the chairs and tables, and two brilliant macaws sitting on wooden
perches in an apparent state of coma, broken only by an occasional
reflective "Wawk!" Once, a high cart flashed in an opening of the trees
to the left, and then disappeared with a rattle of harness chains, in
the direction of the porte Dauphine. For the rest, there was nothing to
suggest that Paris might not be fifty kilometres distant. All the world
was at breakfast.
Eugène stretched his legs, squinted at the toes of his narrow riding
boots, and swore tenderly at himself for having refused the invitation
of the Marquise de Baucheron. Experience might have taught him that Rosa
de Mirecourt would not be in the Bois that morning. It was a peculiarity
of Rosa's to be in evidence on every occasion when her presence was not
to be desired, and never to turn up when one was in the mood to chat or
breakfast with her. Eugène had measured the Acacias bridle-path at a
canter eight times since noon, scanning the driveway for a glimpse of
the blue and scarlet victoria with the cream-colored mares, and all in
vain. Rosa was nowhere to be seen. By this time, no doubt, some other
lieutenant of chasseurs was thrashing out the latest gossip of the
demi-monde over her breakfast table in the rue de Bassano, and still
another was, in all probability, filling his place at Madame de
Baucheron's, and eating the Friday breakfast--sole cardinale and oeufs
brouillés aux crevettes--for which her chef was famous. Baste! what a
world!
The domino waiter reappeared presently in the doorway, came quickly
across to Eugène's table with a curious, tottering shuffle born of his
swaddling apron, and served a small white mug of cold milk as if it had
been Château Latour-Blanche.
"Beautiful weather, my lieutenant," he ventured cheerfully, for he had
done his service, and knew the meaning of the single epaulette.
But Eugène was in no mood for light conversation. For sole reply, he
paid his score, and then drank the milk slowly, looking out toward the
lower lake, across the wide stretch of fresh grass mottled with flecks
of sunlight sifted through the foliage above. At his side Vivandière
nuzzled the turf along the border of the graveled terrasse, the lithe
muscles rippling in her polished neck, and her deep eye shifting now and
again in its socket as she looked doubtfully, almost pleadingly, toward
her master. They were well known on the Allée and the bridle-path of the
avenue du Bois, these two,--the young chasseur, tall, clean-cut, and
slender, with a complexion like a girl's, and the gayety of Polichinelle
himself, in full red breeches and tunic of black and light blue; and the
chestnut mare, nervous and alert, with her racing lines, and her long,
leisurely gallop, superb in its suggestion of reserve speed and
unflagging endurance.
The fates were kind to Lieutenant Eugène Drouin. Paris, spring, youth,
an ample fortune, a commission in the _chasseurs_, good looks, a
thoroughbred Arab, and a half dozen women frankly in love with
him,--surely there was nothing lacking; and yet he knew that something
was lacking, though he could not have said what, as he sat sprawling in
his little iron chair at the Pré Catalan that morning.
He straightened himself suddenly, as she came up the driveway from the
left, and then rose with a stiff salute, for, a pace or so behind,
walked Vieux César, so-called by an irreverent garrison, leading two
horses, one limping badly. Eugène had seen him but once, at the review
of the Quatorze Juillet, but, though he was not in uniform now, the
fierce gray mustache and keen black eyes of General Tournadour were too
familiar to Parisians to pass unrecognized in a throng, much less under
circumstances such as these. When one has been Military Governor of
Paris, and held the portfolio of war, one does not achieve _incognito_
merely by donning a black civile. So Eugène saluted the general--but
with his eyes on the girl.
She was not beautiful, he told himself, in that first moment of
surprise and swift observation, but about her, as she barely glanced at
him in passing, there was an indefinably compellant charm which arrested
his attention and held it, like an unrecognized but strangely sweet
perfume, suddenly met with in a familiar spot where there is no apparent
reason for its presence. Without doubt, it was a very little thing. He
knew enough of such matters to be aware that an unanalyzed attraction of
the kind which, at first glance, makes a woman appear utterly
irresistible, is apt, on closer acquaintance, to resolve itself into the
merest trifle of dissimilarity from other women,--a tilt of a
lip-corner, a dimple in an unlikely spot, a trick with the hands or the
head, a rebellious wisp of hair. For he was very philosophical, and very
wise, was Eugène, and twenty-six years of age, into the bargain. So
there was nothing one could tell him about women. But, in any event,
there was no time to define the particular charm in question. He felt
rather than saw it, as she went by him, with the faintest possible whiff
of orris, and the gleam of a patent-leather boot at the edge of her
habit. No, she was certainly not beautiful, but she was something
dangerously, deliciously akin, said Lieutenant Drouin to himself; and
that, in the unloveliest costume that can be worn by womankind,--a
deep-green habit of extreme severity, and a squat derby, like a boy's,
with an elastic strap brutally grooving her ruddy hair.
General Tournadour did not follow the girl beyond the spot where Eugène
was standing, but drew up abruptly, and indicated the lamed horse with a
gesture of irritation.
"A beautiful affair, my word, lieutenant!" he said. "This animal
stumbled, back there, and has received some injury,--I know not what. We
have walked from the Allée, in hope of finding a sapin here, and all
without result."
The young officer was already feeling the animal's hocks with a
practiced hand. There was a swelling just above the right fore fetlock,
and as he touched it, the horse winced and kicked out sharply.
"A bad wrench, I fear, my general," said Eugène. "He should have an
hour's rest, at least." Then, looking quickly at the saddle, "It is
evident that madame cannot ride him home. No doubt they will give him a
stall in the farm stable. You can send a groom out for him this
afternoon."
"Dieu! That is very well, monsieur," answered the former minister of
war, with an air of perplexity amusingly in contrast with his fierce
moustache. "But my daughter"--
Now Lieutenant Drouin, in matters where a woman was concerned, was
nothing if not adroit. He sent a flying glance in the direction of the
girl. She had aroused one of the comatose macaws from his lethargy, and
now stood watching him as he munched the biscuit she had taken from a
neighboring table. And again Eugène was conscious of an inexplicable but
very decided little thrill.
"If Mademoiselle Tournadour--if you, my general, will consider me at
your service, I shall be glad to have you make use of my mare
Vivandière, here. She is as gentle as a lamb--but, perhaps, not unworthy
of being seen in company with your own horse."
The General's eyes twinkled at the boyishness of the remark. He knew a
horse as well as another, Vieux César, and to describe the superb Arab
before him as being, perhaps, not unworthy of being seen in company with
his own sturdy charger was a bit of satire much to his relish.
"Merci!" he answered. "It is the proposal of an officer and a gentleman.
But my daughter must decide if it is possible for us to accept it. In
the matter of names, monsieur, you have me at an advantage."
"Pardon!" said the other. "I should have realized that. I am Eugène
Drouin, lieutenant of the 29th Chasseurs."
"Natalie!" cried the General, beckoning with his crop.
As Mademoiselle Tournadour came forward, the young chasseur again made a
confidant of himself, this time for the satisfaction of observing that
he was an imbecile, and that a man who could not tell at the first
glance whether or not a woman was entirely beautiful, deserved not to
have an opportunity of discovering the fact at all. Their eyes met
fairly, his glowing with delighted surprise, hers touched with that
expression of negative inquiry and polite interest which immediately
precedes an introduction.
"My daughter," said the General, prodding the air with his crop in her
direction. "Lieutenant Drouin, of the 29th Chasseurs," he added,
prodding again, in the direction of Eugène. "Monsieur le lieutenant has
been so kind as to offer thee the use of his own horse, and suggests
that we leave Le Cid here to be cared for until I can send Victor for
him. I tell him thou art the one to decide."
"Monsieur, you are truly kind," said the girl easily--_too_ easily,
thought Eugène!--"but it would be to presume upon your generosity."
"But it is nothing," protested the officer. "Voyons! It is but a step to
La Muette, and there I have the Ceinture!"
"You are stationed at the quartier de cavalerie?" asked Tournadour.
"Rue Desaix, yes, mon général," answered Eugène. Then, turning again to
the girl, "Surely you must consent, mademoiselle. It is the simplest
way. And this afternoon, if you will permit me"--
"Yes," put in the General, "and this afternoon Victor can leave your
horse at the caserne as he is coming to take Le Cid.
"Eh, dis-donc, Natalie," he added, fretfully, observing that the girl
still hesitated. "Don't make difficulties, my dear. There is
breakfast--yes, breakfast to be considered, and it is one, and past.
Since the lieutenant is so kind"--
"Since the lieutenant is so kind," said his daughter with a smile, "eh
bien, I accept."
It was the work of a moment for Eugène to shift the side-saddle from Le
Cid to Vivandière. The general had already mounted, and was gazing off
toward the porte Dauphine, with his nose in the air, as if he scented
breakfast from afar.
"She is very beautiful, monsieur, your Vivandière, and you are very
good," said Mademoiselle Tournadour, as the chasseur tightened the
girth, after her boot had touched his hand, and she was in the saddle.
"She is very fortunate, mademoiselle," answered Eugène, curiously
embarrassed for one so skilled in compliment. "If she wins, I shall feel
that she owes the race to this good omen."
"The race?" said the girl.
"The Officers' Steeple Chase at Auteuil, on Sunday."
"You ride her yourself?"
There was a strange little note of more than casual interest in the
question, and Eugène looked up suddenly. For the second time their eyes
met.
"Yes," he answered. "Why?"
"Why? But nothing, monsieur, except, perhaps, to wish you bonne chance."
She touched Vivandière with her heel.
"Adieu, monsieur," she added, "and a thousand thanks!"
Eugène bowed.
"For nothing," he said, "and au revoir, mademoiselle!"
Then he watched them out of sight, with his arm through Le Cid's
bridle-rein, and his trim English saddle sprawling at his feet.
There was something delightfully ingenuous, to Eugène's way of thinking,
in Vieux César's method of unloading the burden of his embarrassment on
the shoulders of the first young lieutenant who crossed his path, and
then riding off serenely to breakfast, leaving the other, as it were, to
gather up and disentangle the loose ends of the situation. He was half
amused, half annoyed that his offer of Vivandière had not been taken
less as a matter of course; but, in view of the circumstances, he
attended with fairly good grace to the details of stabling Le Cid, and
arranging to send for his saddle, and then struck out at a swinging gait
for the footpath to La Muette. For all of which there was a sufficient
reason in the person of Mademoiselle Tournadour.
Now, as he revolved the meeting in his mind, he found that it was not in
the least degree a surprise. Somehow, he had always expected that this
girl would step suddenly into his life, with her ruddy hair and her gray
eyes. It seemed to him to be something which the natural evolution of
that life demanded. He had sounded every note in the gamut of emotions
appropriate to a man in his position. He had had his serious, almost
ascetic moods, his despondencies, his flights of folly, his impulses of
stern ambition, his hours of morbid brooding and of reckless gayety. He
could no longer number his love-affairs with any approach to accuracy.
They were hopelessly jumbled in his memory, by very reason of their
number and their triviality. Here and there, a face stood out from its
fellows--the Baronne de Banis, Lady Mary Kaswellyn, Rosa de Mirecourt,
or the Marquise de Baucheron--but none of these impelled him to regret.
There were no entanglements, no uncomfortable circumstances to recall.
Not a stone lay in the way of the gate of the future, as, in his
imagination, it swung open before him. As we have said, the fates were
kind to Lieutenant Eugène Drouin. The current of experience had borne
his individual shallop over deeps and shallows safely and with a song,
and, now that a sudden turn of the stream had shown him Natalie
Tournadour waiting on the bank, it seemed to him to be the most natural
thing imaginable,--something which intuition had taught him was
inevitable, and, what was better, which experience told him was
desirable. The event had found him ready and willing to make room for
her beside him in the boat, and, so, continue the journey in her
company, well content. He bowed to fate politely, with a graceful merci!
For forty-eight hours he watched, almost as if he had been a
disinterested outsider, this pleasant fancy moulding the details of his
future life. He reckoned his rentes anew, assigning a due proportion to
a little hôtel in the Monceau quarter, to a villa at Houlgate, to
horses, household expenses, his wife's allowance, servants,
entertainment, a month at Aix, another at Nice, a third at Hombourg. He
saw himself retired, and in the Chambre. And over all hovered, like a
luminous presiding angel, the presence of Mademoiselle Tournadour--Madame
Drouin!
So Sunday came, and, with it, breakfast at Armenonville with two fellow
officers, and the growing exhilaration of the approaching race. Eugène
was in his gayest mood--for was not Vivandière not only the winner of
last year's Steeple Chase, but to-day in better form than she had ever
been? But he allowed his good spirits to be touched, now and again, with
a gentle, pleasurable melancholy, as the violins of the tziganes glided
into the long, languorous swell of the Valse Bleue, and his handsome
eyes clouded thoughtfully, and his fine mouth drooped, so that Gaston
Cavaignac rallied him joyously upon the new affair, which alone could
account for such tristesse. It lent an added zest, this. Eugène smiled,
and was glad that in his denial of the charge rang so little of
conviction.
The first race had been already run, as the three officers slipped
through the main entrance of Auteuil, and made their way across the
pesage, and past the betting booths, to the grass oval around which the
horses, in charge of stable lads, were slowly circling. It was one of
May's clearest and most brilliant afternoons. The gravel pathways and
stretches of vivid turf were thronged with the best known men and women
of the two great Parisian worlds of sport and fashion, and the air rang
with gay gossip and spirited discussion. But Eugène had ears for none of
this, and eyes but for two things,--Vivandière, blanketed, and swinging
around the oval with her long, sure stride, and Natalie Tournadour, in a
delicious gown of soft blue, standing at the side of Vieux César. Life,
at that moment, was good to live. The chasseur drew a quick breath of
pleased surprise. She was there, then, to see him win. He might have
known!
A mixture of sudden, unfamiliar embarrassment and boyish vanity caused
him to avoid her eye as he made a turn of the oval, consulting with his
stable lad about the mare's condition; but he held himself very
straight, and was pleasantly conscious that his tunic was new, and his
boots a veritable triumph of Coquillot's. When he went back to his
companions his eyes were glowing.
"Content?" asked Cavaignac.
"Je te crois, mon vieux!" he answered. "One never can say, but it is
certain that no one has a better chance. She is perfection!"
"There is the white," put in Lieutenant Mors, dubiously.
Eugène vouchsafed the rival racer a brief, contemptuous glance. It was a
lean, powerfully built brute, with an astonishing reach to even the
leisurely stride with which he paced the oval. A trainer would have had
something to say of those lithe shoulders, and that long barrel,
dwindling along the flanks, and that easy swing of haunch and swathed
hock. But Eugène was not a trainer.
"A fine animal," he observed, carelessly, "but there is no comparison.
One has only to look at Vivandière."
"Tiens!" cried Gaston, "the saddling-bell! I am off to put five louis on
you gagnant, and five placé. Bonne chance, vieux!"