The darkness, where the rain fell through the vague halos of light round
the street lamps, glittered with streaks of pale gold. Andrews's ears
were full of the sound of racing gutters and spattering waterspouts, and
of the hard unceasing beat of the rain on the pavements. It was after
closing time. The corrugated shutters were drawn down, in front of cafe
windows. Andrews's cap was wet; water trickled down his forehead and the
sides of his nose, running into his eyes. His feet were soaked and he
could feel the wet patches growing on his knees where they received the
water running off his overcoat. The street stretched wide and dark ahead
of him, with an occasional glimmer of greenish reflection from a lamp.
As he walked, splashing with long strides through the rain, he noticed
that he was keeping pace with a woman under an umbrella, a slender
person who was hurrying with small resolute steps up the boulevard.
When he saw her, a mad hope flamed suddenly through him. He remembered
a vulgar little theatre and the crude light of a spot light. Through
the paint and powder a girl's golden-brown skin had shone with a firm
brilliance that made him think of wide sun-scorched uplands, and dancing
figures on Greek vases. Since he had seen her two nights ago, he had
thought of nothing else. He had feverishly found out her name. “Naya
Selikoff!” A mad hope flared through him that this girl he was walking
beside was the girl whose slender limbs moved in an endless frieze
through his thoughts. He peered at her with eyes blurred with rain. What
an ass he was! Of course it couldn't be; it was too early. She was
on the stage at this minute. Other hungry eyes were staring at her
slenderness, other hands were twitching to stroke her golden-brown skin.
Walking under the steady downpour that stung his face and ears and sent
a tiny cold trickle down his back, he felt a sudden dizziness of desire
come over him. His hands, thrust to the bottom of his coat pockets,
clutched convulsively. He felt that he would die, that his pounding
blood vessels would burst. The bead curtains of rain rustled and tinkled
about him, awakening his nerves, making his skin flash and tingle. In
the gurgle of water in gutters and water spouts he could imagine he
heard orchestras droning libidinous music. The feverish excitement of
his senses began to create frenzied rhythms in his ears:
“O ce pauvre poilu! Qu'il doit etre mouille” said a small tremulous
voice beside him.
He turned.
The girl was offering him part of her umbrella.
“O c'est un Americain!” she said again, still speaking as if to herself.
“Mais ca ne vaut pas la peine.”
“Mais oui, mais oui.”
He stepped under the umbrella beside her.
“But you must let me hold it.”
“Bien.”
As he took the umbrella he caught her eye. He stopped still in his
tracks.
“But you're the girl at the Rat qui Danse.”
“And you were at the next table with the man who sang?”
“How amusing!”
“Et celui-la! O il etait rigolo....” She burst out laughing; her head,
encased in a little round black hat, bobbed up and down under the
umbrella. Andrews laughed too. Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, a
taxi nearly ran them down and splashed a great wave of mud over them.
She clutched his arm and then stood roaring with laughter.
“O quelle horreur! Quelle horreur!” she kept exclaiming.
Andrews laughed and laughed.
“But hold the umbrella over us.... You're letting the rain in on my best
hat,” she said again.
“Your name is Jeanne,” said Andrews.
“Impertinent! You heard my brother call me that.... He went back to the
front that night, poor little chap.... He's only nineteen ... he's very
clever.... O, how happy I am now that the war's over.”
“You are older than he?”
“Two years.... I am the head of the family.... It is a dignified
position.”
“Have you always lived in Paris?”
“No, we are from Laon.... It's the war.”
“Refugees?”
“Don't call us that.... We work.”
Andrews laughed.
“Are you going far?” she asked peering in his face.
“No, I live up here.... My name is the same as yours.”
“Jean? How funny!”
“Where are you going?”
“Rue Descartes.... Behind St. Etienne.”
“I live near you.”
“But you mustn't come. The concierge is a tigress.... Etienne calls her
Mme. Clemenceau.”
“Who? The saint?”
“No, you silly--my brother. He is a socialist. He's a typesetter at
l'Humanite.”
“Really? I often read l'Humanite.”
“Poor boy, he used to swear he'd never go in the army. He thought of
going to America.”
“That wouldn't do him any good now,” said Andrews bitterly. “What do you
do?”
“I?” a gruff bitterness came into her voice. “Why should I tell you? I
work at a dressmaker's.”
“Like Louise?”
“You've heard Louise? Oh, how I cried.”
“Why did it make you sad?”
“Oh, I don't know.... But I'm learning stenography.... But here we are!”
The great bulk of the Pantheon stood up dimly through the rain beside
them. In front the tower of St. Etienne-du-Mont was just visible. The
rain roared about them.
“Oh, how wet I am!” said Jeanne.
“Look, they are giving Louise day after tomorrow at the Opera
Comique.... Won't you come; with me?”
“No, I should cry too much.”
“I'll cry too.”
“But it's not...”
“Cest l'armistice,” interrupted Andrews.
They both laughed!
“All right! Meet me at the cafe at the end of the Boul' Mich' at a
quarter past seven.... But you probably won't come.”
“I swear I will,” cried Andrews eagerly.
“We'll see!” She darted away down the street beside St. Etienne-du-Mont.
Andrews was left alone amid the seethe of the rain and the tumultuous
gurgle of water-spouts. He felt calm and tired.
When he got to his room, he found he had no matches in his pocket.
No light came from the window through which he could hear the hissing
clamor of the rain in the court. He stumbled over a chair.
“Are you drunk?” came Walters's voice swathed in bedclothes. “There are
matches on the table.”
“But where the hell's the table?”
At last his hand, groping over the table, closed on the matchbox.
The match's red and white flicker dazzled him. He blinked his eyes; the
lashes were still full of raindrops. When he had lit a candle and set
it amongst the music papers upon the table, he tore off his dripping
clothes.
“I just met the most charming girl, Walters,” Andrews stood naked beside
the pile of his clothes, rubbing himself with a towel. “Gee! I was
wet.... But she was the most charming person I've met since I've been in
Paris.”
“I thought you said you let the girls alone.”
“Whores, I must have said.”
“Well! Any girl you could pick up on the street....”
“Nonsense!”
“I guess they are all that way in this damned country.... God, it will
do me good to see a nice sweet wholesome American girl.”
Andrews did not answer. He blew out the light and got into bed.
“But I've got a new job,” Walters went on. “I'm working in the school
detachment office.”
“Why the hell do that? You came here to take courses in the Sorbonne,
didn't you?”
“Sure. I go to most of them now. But in this army I like to be in the
middle of things, see? Just so they can't put anything over on me.”
“There's something in that.”
“There's a damn lot in it, boy. The only way is to keep in right and not
let the man higher up forget you.... Why, we may start fighting again.
These damn Germans ain't showin' the right spirit at all... after all
the President's done for them. I expect to get my sergeantcy out of it
anyway.”
“Well, I'm going to sleep,” said Andrews sulkily.
John Andrews sat at a table outside the cafe de Rohan. The sun had just
set on a ruddy afternoon, flooding everything with violet-blue light and
cold greenish shadow. The sky was bright lilac color, streaked with a
few amber clouds. The lights were on in all the windows of the Magazin
du Louvre opposite, so that the windows seemed bits of polished glass
in the afterglow. In the colonnade of the Palais Royal the shadows were
deepening and growing colder. A steady stream of people poured in and
out of the Metro. Green buses stuffed with people kept passing. The roar
of the traffic and the clatter of footsteps and the grumble of voices
swirled like dance music about Andrews's head. He noticed all at once
that the rabbit man stood in front of him, a rabbit dangling forgotten
at the end of its rubber tube.
“Et ca va bien? le commerce,” said Andrews.
“Quietly, quietly,” said the rabbit man, distractedly making the rabbit
turn a somersault at his feet. Andrews watched the people going into the
Metro.
“The gentleman amuses himself in Paris?” asked the rabbit man timidly.
“Oh, yes; and you?”
“Quietly,” the rabbit man smiled. “Women are very beautiful at this hour
of the evening,” he said again in his very timid tone.
“There is nothing more beautiful than this moment of the evening... in
Paris.”
“Or Parisian women.” The eyes of the rabbit man glittered. “Excuse me,
sir,” he went on. “I must try and sell some rabbits.”
“Au revoir,” said Andrews holding out his hand.
The rabbit man shook it with sudden vigor and went off, making a rabbit
hop before him along the curbstone. He was hidden by the swiftly moving
crowds.
In the square, flaring violet arclights were flickering on, lighting up
their net-covered globes that hung like harsh moons above the pavement.
Henslowe sat down on a chair beside Andrews.
“How's Sinbad?”
“Sinbad, old boy, is functioning.... Aren't you frozen?”
“How do you mean, Henslowe?”
“Overheated, you chump, sitting out here in polar weather.”
“No, but I mean.... How are you functioning?” said Andrews laughing.
“I'm going to Poland tomorrow.”
“How?”
“As guard on a Red Cross supply train. I think you might make it if you
want to come, if we beat it right over to the Red Cross before Major
Smithers goes. Or we might take him out to dinner.”
“But, Henny, I'm staying.”
“Why the hell stay in this hole?”
“I like it. I'm getting a better course in orchestration than I imagined
existed, and I met a girl the other day, and I'm crazy over Paris.”
“If you go and get entangled, I swear I'll beat your head in with a
Polish shillaughly.... Of course you've met a girl--so have I--lots. We
can meet some more in Poland and dance polonaises with them.”
“No, but this girl's charming.... You've seen her. She's the girl who
was with the poilu at the Rat qui Danse the first night I was in Paris.
We went to Louise together.”
“Must have been a grand sentimental party.... I swear.... I may run
after a Jane now and again but I never let them interfere with the
business of existence,” muttered Henslowe crossly.
They were both silent.
“You'll be as bad as Heinz with his Moki and the lion cub named Bubu....
By the way, it's dead.... Well, where shall we have dinner?”
“I'm dining with Jeanne.... I'm going to meet her in half an hour....
I'm awfully sorry, Henny. We might all dine together.”
“A fat chance! No, I'll have to go and find that ass Aubrey, and hear
all about the Peace Conference.... Heinz can't leave Moki because she's
having hysterics on account of Bubu. I'll probably be driven to going to
see Berthe in the end.... You're a nice one.”
“We'll have a grand seeing-off party for you tomorrow, Henny.”
“Look! I forgot! You're to meet Aubrey at the Crillon at five tomorrow,
and he's going to take you to see Genevieve Rod?”
“Who the hell's Genevieve Rod?”
“Darned if I know. But Aubrey said you'd got to come. She is an
intellectual, so Aubrey says.”
“That's the last thing I want to meet.”
“Well, you can't help yourself. So long!”
Andrews sat a while more at the table outside the cafe. A cold wind was
blowing. The sky was blue-black and the ashen white arc lamps cast a
mortuary light over everything. In the Colonnade of the Palais Royal
the shadows were harsh and inky. In the square the people were gradually
thinning. The lights in the Magazin du Louvre had gone out. From the
cafe behind him, a faint smell of fresh-cooked food began to saturate
the cold air of the street.
Then he saw Jeanne advancing across the ash-grey pavement of the square,
slim and black under the arc lights. He ran to meet her.
The cylindrical stove in the middle of the floor roared softly. In front
of it the white cat was rolled into a fluffy ball in which ears and
nose made tiny splashes of pink like those at the tips of the petals
of certain white roses. One side of the stove at the table against the
window, sat an old brown man with a bright red stain on each cheek bone,
who wore formless corduroy clothes, the color of his skin. Holding the
small spoon in a knotted hand he was stirring slowly and continuously a
liquid that was yellow and steamed in a glass. Behind him was the window
with sleet beating against it in the leaden light of a wintry afternoon.
The other side of the stove was a zinc bar with yellow bottles and green
bottles and a water spigot with a neck like a giraffe's that rose out of
the bar beside a varnished wood pillar that made the decoration of the
corner, with a terra cotta pot of ferns on top of it. From where Andrews
sat on the padded bench at the back of the room the fern fronds made a
black lacework against the lefthand side of the window, while against
the other was the brown silhouette of the old man's head, and the
slant of his cap. The stove hid the door and the white cat, round and
symmetrical, formed the center of the visible universe. On the marble
table beside Andrews were some pieces of crisp bread with butter on
them, a saucer of damson jam and a bowl with coffee and hot milk from
which the steam rose in a faint spiral. His tunic was unbuttoned and he
rested his head on his two hands, staring through his fingers at a thick
pile of ruled paper full of hastily drawn signs, some in ink and some
in pencil, where now and then he made a mark with a pencil. At the other
edge of the pile of papers were two books, one yellow and one white with
coffee stains on it.
The fire roared and the cat slept and the old brown man stirred and
stirred, rarely stopping for a moment to lift the glass to his lips.
Occasionally the scratching of sleet upon the windows became audible, or
there was a distant sound of dish pans through the door in the back.
The sallow-faced clock that hung above the mirror that backed the bar,
jerked out one jingly strike, a half hour. Andrews did not look up.
The cat still slept in front of the stove which roared with a gentle
singsong. The old brown man still stirred the yellow liquid in his
glass. The clock was ticking uphill towards the hour.
Andrews's hands were cold. There was a nervous flutter in his wrists and
in his chest. Inside of him was a great rift of light, infinitely vast
and infinitely distant. Through it sounds poured from somewhere, so that
he trembled with them to his finger tips, sounds modulated into rhythms
that washed back and forth and crossed each other like sea waves in a
cove, sounds clotted into harmonies.
Behind everything the Queen of Sheba, out of Flaubert, held her
fantastic hand with its long, gilded finger nails on his shoulder; and
he was leaning forward over the brink of life. But the image was vague,
like a shadow cast on the brilliance of his mind.
The clock struck four.
The white fluffy ball of the cat unrolled very slowly. Its eyes were
very round and yellow. It put first one leg and then the other out
before it on the tiled floor, spreading wide the pinkey-grey claws.
Its tail rose up behind it straight as the mast of a ship. With slow
processional steps the cat walked towards the door.
The old brown man drank down the yellow liquid and smacked his lips
twice, loudly, meditatively.
Andrews raised his head, his blue eyes looking straight before him
without seeing anything. Dropping the pencil, he leaned back against the
wall and stretched his arms out. Taking the coffee bowl between his two
hands, he drank s little. It was cold. He piled some jam on a piece of
bread and ate it, licking a little off his fingers afterwards. Then he
looked towards the old brown man and said:
“On est bien ici, n'est ce pas, Monsieur Morue?”
“Oui, on est bien ici,” said the old brown man in a voice so gruff it
seemed to rattle. Very slowly he got to his feet.
“Good. I am going to the barge,” he said. Then he called, “Chipette!”
“Oui, m'sieu.”
A little girl in a black apron with her hair in two tight pigtails that
stood out behind her tiny bullet head as she ran, came through the door
from the back part of the house.
“There, give that to your mother,” said the old brown man, putting some
coppers in her hand.
“Oui, m'sieu.”
“You'd better stay here where it's warm,” said Andrews yawning.
“I have to work. It's only soldiers don't have to work,” rattled the old
brown man.
When the door opened a gust of raw air circled about the wine shop,
and a roar of wind and hiss of sleet came from the slush-covered quai
outside. The cat took refuge beside the stove, with its back up and its
tail waving. The door closed and the old brown man's silhouette, slanted
against the wind, crossed the grey oblong of the window.
Andrews settled down to work again.
“But you work a lot a lot, don't you; M'sieu Jean?” said Chipette,
putting her chin on the table beside the books and looking up into his
eyes with little eyes like black beads.
“I wonder if I do.”
“When I'm grown up I shan't work a bit. I'll drive round in a carriage.”
Andrews laughed. Chipette looked at him for a minute and then went into
the other room carrying away the empty coffee bowl.
In front of the stove the cat sat on its haunches, licking a paw
rhythmically with a pink curling tongue like a rose petal.
Andrews whistled a few bars, staring at the cat.
“What d'you think of that, Minet? That's la reine de Saba... la reine de
Saba.”
The cat curled into a ball again with great deliberation and went to
sleep.
Andrews began thinking of Jeanne and the thought gave him a sense of
quiet well-being. Strolling with her in the evening through the streets
full of men and women walking significantly together sent a languid calm
through his jangling nerves which he had never known in his life before.
It excited him to be with her, but very suavely, so that he forgot that
his limbs were swathed stiffly in an uncomfortable uniform, so that his
feverish desire seemed to fly out of him until with her body beside him,
he seemed to drift effortlessly in the stream of the lives of all the
people he passed, so languid, from the quiet loves that streamed up
about him that the hard walls of his personality seemed to have melted
entirely into the mistiness of twilight streets. And for a moment as he
thought of it a scent of flowers, heavy with pollen, and sprouting
grass and damp moss and swelling sap, seemed to tingle in his nostrils.
Sometimes, swimming in the ocean on a rough day, he had felt that same
reckless exhilaration when, towards the shore, a huge seething wave had
caught him up and sped him forward on its crest. Sitting quietly in the
empty wine shop that grey afternoon, he felt his blood grumble and swell
in his veins as the new life was grumbling and swelling in the sticky
buds of the trees, in the tender green quick under their rough bark, in
the little furry animals of the woods and in the sweet-smelling cattle
that tramped into mud the lush meadows. In the premonition of spring
was a resistless wave of force that carried him and all of them with it
tumultuously.
The clock struck five.
Andrews jumped to his feet and still struggling into his overcoat darted
out of the door.
A raw wind blew on the square. The river was a muddy grey-green, swollen
and rapid. A hoarse triumphant roaring came from it. The sleet had
stopped; but the pavements were covered with slush and in the gutters
were large puddles which the wind ruffled. Everything,--houses, bridges,
river and sky,--was in shades of cold grey-green, broken by one jagged
ochre-colored rift across the sky against which the bulk of Notre Dame
and the slender spire of the crossing rose dark and purplish. Andrews
walked with long strides, splashing through the puddles, until, opposite
the low building of the Morgue, he caught a crowded green bus.
Outside the Hotel Crillon were many limousines, painted olive-drab,
with numbers in white letters on the doors; the drivers, men with their
olive-drab coat collars turned up round their red faces, stood in
groups under the portico. Andrews passed the sentry and went through the
revolving doors into the lobby, which was vividly familiar. It had the
smell he remembered having smelt in the lobbies of New York hotels,--a
smell of cigar smoke and furniture polish. On one side a door led to
a big dining room where many men and women were having tea, from which
came a smell of pastry and rich food. On the expanse of red carpet
in front of him officers and civilians stood in groups talking in low
voices. There was a sound of jingling spurs and jingling dishes from the
restaurant, and near where Andrews stood shifting his weight from one
foot to the other, sprawled in a leather chair a fat man with a black
felt hat over his eyes and a large watch chain dangling limply over his
bulbous paunch. He cleared his throat occasionally with a rasping noise
and spat loudly into the spittoon beside him.
At last Andrews caught sight of Aubrey, who was dapper with white cheeks
and tortoise shell glasses.
“Come along,” he said, seizing Andrews by the arm.
“You are late.” Then, he went on, whispering in Andrews's ear as they
went out through the revolving doors: “Great things happened in the
Conference today.... I can tell you that, old man.”
They crossed the bridge towards the portico of the Chamber of Deputies
with its high pediment and its grey columns. Down the river they could
see faintly the Eiffel Tower with a drift of mist athwart it, like a
section of spider web spun between the city and the clouds.
“Do we have to go to see these people, Aubrey?”
“Yes, you can't back out now. Genevieve Rod wants to know about American
music.”
“But what on earth can I tell her about American music?”
“Wasn't there a man named MacDowell who went mad or something?” Andrews
laughed.
“But you know I haven't any social graces.... I suppose I'll have to say
I think Foch is a little tin god.”
“You needn't say anything if you don't want to.... They're very
advanced, anyway.”
“Oh, rats!”
They were going up a brown-carpeted stair that had engravings on the
landings, where there was a faint smell of stale food and dustpans. At
the top landing Aubrey rang the bell at a varnished door. In a moment a
girl opened it. She had a cigarette in her hand, her face was pale under
a mass of reddish-chestnut hair, her eyes very large, a pale brown,
as large as the eyes of women in those paintings of Artemisias and
Berenikes found in tombs in the Fayum. She wore a plain black dress.
“Enfin!” she said, and held out her hand to Aubrey.
“There's my friend Andrews.”
She held out her hand to him absently, still looking at Aubrey.
“Does he speak French?... Good.... This way.” They went into a large
room with a piano where an elderly woman, with grey hair and yellow
teeth and the same large eyes as her daughter, stood before the
fireplace.
“Maman... enfin ils arrivent, ces messieurs.”
“Genevieve was afraid you weren't coming,” Mme. Rod said to Andrews,
smiling. “Monsieur Aubrey gave us such a picture of your playing that we
have been excited all day.... We adore music.”
“I wish I could do something more to the point with it than adore
it,” said Genevieve Rod hastily, then she went on with a laugh: “But I
forget..... Monsieur Andreffs.... Monsieur Ronsard.” She made a gesture
with her hand from Andrews to a young Frenchman in a cut-away coat, with
small mustaches and a very tight vest, who bowed towards Andrews.
“Now we'll have tea,” said Genevieve Rod. “Everybody talks sense until
they've had tea.... It's only after tea that anyone is ever amusing.”
She pulled open some curtains that covered the door into the adjoining
room.
“I understand why Sarah Bernhardt is so fond of curtains,” she said.
“They give an air of drama to existence.... There is nothing more heroic
than curtains.”
She sat at the head of an oak table where were china platters with
vari-colored pastries, an old pewter kettle under which an alcohol lamp
burned, a Dresden china teapot in pale yellows and greens, and cups and
saucers and plates with a double-headed eagle design in dull vermilion.
“Tout ca,” said Genevieve, waving her hand across the table, “c'est
Boche.... But we haven't any others, so they'll have to do.”
The older woman, who sat beside her, whispered something in her ear and
laughed.
Genevieve put on a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles and starting
pouring out tea.
“Debussy once drank out of that cup..... It's cracked,” she said,
handing a cup to John Andrews. “Do you know anything of Moussorgski's
you can play to us after tea?”
“I can't play anything any more.... Ask me three months from now.”
“Oh, yes; but nobody expects you to do any tricks with it. You can
certainly make it intelligible. That's all I want.”
“I have my doubts.”
Andrews sipped his tea slowly, looking now and then at Genevieve Rod who
had suddenly begun talking very fast to Ronsard. She held a cigarette
between the fingers of a long thin hand. Her large pale-brown eyes kept
their startled look of having just opened on the world; a little smile
appeared and disappeared maliciously in the curve of her cheek away from
her small firm lips. The older woman beside her kept looking round the
table with a jolly air of hospitality, and showing her yellow teeth in a
smile.
Afterwards they went back to the sitting room and Andrews sat down
at the piano. The girl sat very straight on a little chair beside the
piano. Andrews ran his fingers up and down the keys.
“Did you say you knew Debussy?” he said suddenly. “I? No; but he used to
come to see my father when I was a little girl.... I have been brought
up in the middle of music.... That shows how silly it is to be a woman.
There is no music in my head. Of course I am sensitive to it, but so are
the tables and chairs in this apartment, after all they've heard.”
Andrews started playing Schumann. He stopped suddenly.
“Can you sing?” he said.
“No.”
“I'd like to do the Proses Lyriques.... I've never heard them.”
“I once tried to sing Le Soir,” she said.
“Wonderful. Do bring it out.”
“But, good Lord, it's too difficult.”
“What is the use of being fond of music if you aren't willing to mangle
it for the sake of producing it?... I swear I'd rather hear a man
picking out Aupres de ma Blonde on a trombone that Kreisler playing
Paganini impeccably enough to make you ill.”
“But there is a middle ground.”
He interrupted her by starting to play again. As he played without
looking at her, he felt that her eyes were fixed on him, that she was
standing tensely behind him. Her hand touched his shoulder. He stopped
playing.
“Oh, I am dreadfully sorry,” she said.
“Nothing. I am finished.”
“You were playing something of your own?”
“Have you ever read La Tentation de Saint Antoine?” he asked in a low
voice.
“Flaubert's?”
“Yes.”
“It's not his best work. A very interesting failure though,” she said.
Andrews got up from the piano with difficulty, controlling a sudden
growing irritation.
“They seem to teach everybody to say that,” he muttered.
Suddenly he realized that other people were in the room. He went up to
Mme. Rod.
“You must excuse me,” he said, “I have an engagement.... Aubrey, don't
let me drag you away. I am late, I've got to run.”
“You must come to see us again.”
“Thank you,” mumbled Andrews.
Genevieve Rod went with him to the door. “We must know each other
better,” she said. “I like you for going off in a huff.”
Andrews flushed.
“I was badly brought up,” he said, pressing her thin cold hand. “And
you French must always remember that we are barbarians.... Some are
repentant barbarians.... I am not.”
She laughed, and John Andrews ran down the stairs and out into the
grey-blue streets, where the lamps were blooming into primrose color.
He had a confused feeling that he had made a fool of himself, which made
him writhe with helpless anger. He walked with long strides through the
streets of the Rive Gauche full of people going home from work, towards
the little wine shop on the Quai de la Tournelle.
It was a Paris Sunday morning. Old women in black shawls were going into
the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont. Each time the leather doors opened
it let a little whiff of incense out into the smoky morning air. Three
pigeons walked about the cobblestones, putting their coral feet one
before the other with an air of importance. The pointed facade of the
church and its slender tower and cupola cast a bluish shadow on the
square in front of it, into which the shadows the old women trailed
behind them vanished as they hobbled towards the church. The opposite
side of the square and the railing of the Pantheon and its tall
brownish-gray flank were flooded with dull orange-colored sunlight.
Andrews walked back and forth in front of the church, looking at the sky
and the pigeons and the facade of the Library of Ste. Genevieve, and at
the rare people who passed across the end of the square, noting forms
and colors and small comical aspects of things with calm delight,
savoring everything almost with complacency. His music, he felt, was
progressing now that, undisturbed, he lived all day long in the rhythm
of it; his mind and his fingers were growing supple. The hard moulds
that had grown up about his spirit were softening. As he walked back and
forth in front of the church waiting for Jeanne, he took an inventory of
his state of mind; he was very happy.
“Eh bien?”
Jeanne had come up behind him. They ran like children hand in hand
across the sunny square.
“I have not had any coffee yet,” said Andrews.
“How late you must get up!... But you can't have any till we get to the
Porte Maillot, Jean.”
“Why not?”
“Because I say you can't.”
“But that's cruelty.”
“It won't be long.”
“But I am dying with hunger. I will die in your hands.”
“Can't you understand? Once we get to the Porte Maillot we'll be far
from your life and my life. The day will be ours. One must not tempt
fate.”
“You funny girl.”
The Metro was not crowded, Andrews and Jeanne sat opposite each other
without talking. Andrews was looking at the girl's hands, limp on her
lap, small overworked hands with places at the tips of the fingers where
the skin was broken and scarred, with chipped uneven nails. Suddenly she
caught his glance. He flushed, and she said jauntily:
“Well, we'll all be rich some day, like princes and princesses in fairy
tales.” They both laughed.
As they were leaving the train at the terminus, he put his arm timidly
round her waist. She wore no corsets. His fingers trembled at the
litheness of the flesh under her clothes. Feeling a sort of terror go
through him he took away his arm.
“Now,” she said quietly as they emerged into the sunlight and the bare
trees of the broad avenue, “you can have all the cafe-au-lait you want.”
“You'll have some too.”
“Why be extravagant? I've had my petit dejeuner.”
“But I'm going to be extravagant all day.... We might as well start now.
I don't know exactly why, but I am very happy. We'll eat brioches.”
“But, my dear, it's only profiteers who can eat brioches now-a-days.”
“You just watch us.”
They went into a patisserie. An elderly woman with a lean yellow face
and thin hair waited on them, casting envious glances up through her
eyelashes as she piled the rich brown brioches on a piece of tissue
paper.
“You'll pass the day in the country?” she asked in a little wistful
voice as she handed Andrews the change.
“Yes,” he said, “how well you guessed.”
As they went out of the door they heard her muttering, “O la jeunesse,
la jeunesse.”
They found a table in the sun at a cafe opposite the gate from which
they could watch people and automobiles and carriages coming in and out.
Beyond, a grass-grown bit of fortifications gave an 1870 look to things.
“How jolly it is at the Porte Maillot!” cried Andrews.
She looked at him and laughed.
“But how gay he is to-day.”
“No. I always like it here. It's the spot in Paris where you always feel
well.... When you go out you have all the fun of leaving town, when you
go in you have all the fun of coming back to town.... But you aren't
eating any brioches?”
“I've eaten one. You eat them. You are hungry.”
“Jeanne, I don't think I have ever been so happy in my life.... It's
almost worth having been in the army for the joy your freedom gives you.
That frightful life.... How is Etienne?”
“He is in Mayence. He's bored.”
“Jeanne, we must live very much, we who are free to make up for all the
people who are still... bored.”
“A lot of good it'll do them,” she cried laughing.
“It's funny, Jeanne, I threw myself into the army. I was so sick of
being free and not getting anywhere. Now I have learnt that life is to
be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody
eats.”
She looked at him blankly.
“I mean, I don't think I get enough out of life,” he said. “Let's go.”
They got to their feet.
“What do you mean?” she said slowly. “One takes what life gives, that is
all, there's no choice.... But look, there's the Malmaison train.... We
must run.”
Giggling and breathless they climbed on the trailer, squeezing
themselves on the back platform where everyone was pushing and
exclaiming. The car began to joggle its way through Neuilly. Their
bodies were pressed together by the men and women about them. Andrews
put his arm firmly round Jeanne's waist and looked down at her pale
cheek that was pressed against his chest. Her little round black straw
hat with a bit of a red flower on it was just under his chin.
“I can't see a thing,” she gasped, still giggling.
“I'll describe the landscape,” said Andrews. “Why, we are crossing the
Seine already.”
“Oh, how pretty it must be!”
An old gentleman with a pointed white beard who stood beside them
laughed benevolently.
“But don't you think the Seine's pretty?” Jeanne looked up at him
impudently.
“Without a doubt, without a doubt.... It was the way you said it,” said
the old gentleman.... “You are going to St. Germain?” he asked Andrews.
“No, to Malmaison.”
“Oh, you should go to St. Germain. M. Reinach's prehistoric museum is
there. It is very beautiful. You should not go home to your country
without seeing it.”
“Are there monkeys in it?” asked Jeanne.
“No,” said the old gentleman turning away.
“I adore monkeys,” said Jeanne.
The car was going along a broad empty boulevard with trees and grass
plots and rows of low store-houses and little dilapidated rooming houses
along either side. Many people had got out and there was plenty of room,
but Andrews kept his arm round the girl's waist. The constant contact
with her body made him feel very languid.
“How good it smells!” said Jeanne.
“It's the spring.”
“I want to lie on the grass and eat violets.... Oh, how good you were
to bring me out like this, Jean. You must know lots of fine ladies you
could have brought out, because you are so well educated. How is it you
are only an ordinary soldier?”
“Good God! I wouldn't be an officer.”
“Why? It must be rather nice to be an officer.”
“Does Etienne want to be an officer?”
“But he's a socialist, that's different.”
“Well, I suppose I must be a socialist too, but let's talk of something
else.”
Andrews moved over to the other side of the platform. They were passing
little villas with gardens on the road where yellow and pale-purple
crocuses bloomed. Now and then there was a scent of violets in the moist
air. The sun had disappeared under soft purplish-grey clouds. There was
occasionally a rainy chill in the wind.
Andrews suddenly thought of Genevieve Rod. Curious how vividly he
remembered her face, her wide, open eyes and her way of smiling without
moving her firm lips. A feeling of annoyance went through him. How silly
of him to go off rudely like that! And he became very anxious to talk to
her again; things he wanted to say to her came to his mind.
“Well, are you asleep?” said Jeanne tugging at his arm. “Here we are.”
Andrews flushed furiously.
“Oh, how nice it is here, how nice it is here!” Jeanne was saying.
“Why, it is eleven o'clock,” said Andrews.
“We must see the palace before lunch,” cried Jeanne, and she started
running up a lane of linden trees, where the fat buds were just bursting
into little crinkling fans of green. New grass was sprouting in the wet
ditches on either side. Andrews ran after her, his feet pounding hard in
the moist gravel road. When he caught up to her he threw his arms round
her recklessly and kissed her panting mouth. She broke away from him and
strode demurely arranging her hat.
“Monster,” she said, “I trimmed this hat specially to come out with you
and you do your best to wreck it.”
“Poor little hat,” said Andrews, “but it is so beautiful today, and you
are very lovely, Jeanne.”
“The great Napoleon must have said that to the Empress Josephine and you
know what he did to her,” said Jeanne almost solemnly.
“But she must have been awfully bored with him long before.”
“No,” said Jeanne, “that's how women are.”
They went through big iron gates into the palace grounds.
Later they sat at a table in the garden of a little restaurant. The sun,
very pale, had just showed itself, making the knives and forks and the
white wine in their glasses gleam faintly. Lunch had not come yet. They
sat looking at each other silently. Andrews felt weary and melancholy.
He could think of nothing to say. Jeanne was playing with some tiny
white daisies with pink tips to their petals, arranging them in circles
and crosses on the tablecloth.
“Aren't they slow?” said Andrews.
“But it's nice here, isn't it?” Jeanne smiled brilliantly. “But how glum
he looks now.” She threw some daisies at him. Then, after a pause, she
added mockingly: “It's hunger, my dear. Good Lord, how dependent men are
on food!”
Andrews drank down his wine at a gulp. He felt that if he could only
make an effort he could lift off the stifling melancholy that was
settling down on him like a weight that kept growing heavier.
A man in khaki, with his face and neck scarlet, staggered into the
garden dragging beside him a mud-encrusted bicycle. He sank into an iron
chair, letting the bicycle fall with a clatter at his feet.
“Hi, hi,” he called in a hoarse voice.
A waiter appeared and contemplated him suspiciously. The man in khaki
had hair as red as his face, which was glistening with sweat. His shirt
was torn, and he had no coat. His breeches and puttees were invisible
for mud.
“Gimme a beer,” croaked the man in khaki.
The waiter shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
“Il demande une biere,” said Andrews.
“Mais Monsieur....”
“I'll pay. Get it for him.”
The waiter disappeared.
“Thankee, Yank,” roared the man in khaki.
The waiter brought a tall narrow yellow glass. The man in khaki took
it from his hand, drank it down at a draught and handed back the empty
glass. Then he spat, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, got with
difficulty to his feet and shambled towards Andrews's table.
“Oi presoom the loidy and you don't mind, Yank, if Oi parley wi' yez a
bit. Do yez?”
“No, come along; where did you come from?”
The man in khaki dragged an iron chair behind him to a spot near the
table. Before sitting down he bobbed his head in the direction of Jeanne
with an air of solemnity tugging at the same time at a lock of his red
hair. After some fumbling he got a red-bordered handkerchief out of
his pocket and wiped his face with it, leaving a long black smudge of
machine oil on his forehead.
“Oi'm a bearer of important secret messages, Yank,” he said, leaning
back in the little iron chair. “Oi'm a despatch-rider.”
“You look all in.”
“Not a bit of it. Oi just had a little hold up, that's all, in a
woodland lane. Some buggers tried to do me in.”
“What d'you mean?”
“Oi guess they had a little information... that's all. Oi'm carryin'
important messages from our headquarters in Rouen to your president. Oi
was goin' through a bloody thicket past this side. Oi don't know how you
pronounce the bloody town.... Oi was on my bike making about thoity for
the road was all a-murk when Oi saw four buggers standing acrost the
road... lookter me suspiciouslike, so Oi jus' jammed the juice into
the boike and made for the middle 'un. He dodged all right. Then they
started shootin' and a bloody bullet buggered the boike.... It was bein'
born with a caul that saved me.... Oi picked myself up outer the
ditch an lost 'em in the woods. Then Oi got to another bloody town and
commandeered this old sweatin' machine.... How many kills is there to
Paris, Yank?”
“Fifteen or sixteen, I think.”
“What's he saying, Jean?”
“Some men tried to stop him on the road. He's a despatch-rider.”
“Isn't he ugly? Is he English?”
“Irish.”
“You bet you, miss; Hirlanday; that's me.... You picked a good looker
this toime, Yank. But wait till Oi git to Paree. Oi clane up a good
hundre' pound on this job in bonuses. What part d'ye come from, Yank?”
“Virginia. I live in New York.”
“Oi been in Detroit; goin' back there to git in the automoebile business
soon as Oi clane up a few more bonuses. Europe's dead an stinkin', Yank.
Ain't no place for a young fellow. It's dead an stinkin', that's what it
is.”
“It's pleasanter to live here than in America.... Say, d'you often get
held up that way?”
“Ain't happened to me before, but it has to pals o' moine.”
“Who d'you think it was?
“Oi dunno; 'Unns or some of these bloody secret agents round the Peace
Conference.... But Oi got to go; that despatch won't keep.”
“All right. The beer's on me.”
“Thank ye, Yank.” The man got to his feet, shook hands with Andrews and
Jeanne, jumped on the bicycle and rode out of the garden to the road,
threading his way through the iron chairs and tables.
“Wasn't he a funny customer?” cried Andrews, laughing. “What a wonderful
joke things are!”
The waiter arrived with the omelette that began their lunch.
“Gives you an idea of how the old lava's bubbling in the volcano.
There's nowhere on earth a man can dance so well as on a volcano.”
“But don't talk that way,” said Jeanne laying down her knife and fork.
“It's terrible. We will waste our youth to no purpose. Our fathers
enjoyed themselves when they were young.... And if there had been no
war we should have been so happy, Etienne and I. My father was a small
manufacturer of soap and perfumery. Etienne would have had a splendid
situation. I should never have had to work. We had a nice house. I
should have been married....”
“But this way, Jeanne, haven't you more freedom?”
She shrugged her shoulders. Later she burst out: “But what's the good
of freedom? What can you do with it? What one wants is to live well and
have a beautiful house and be respected by people. Oh, life was so sweet
in France before the war.”
“In that case it's not worth living,” said Andrews in a savage voice,
holding himself in.
They went on eating silently. The sky became overcast. A few drops
splashed on the table-cloth.
“We'll have to take coffee inside,” said Andrews.
“And you think it is funny that people shoot at a man on a motorcycle
going through a wood. All that seems to me terrible, terrible,” said
Jeanne.
“Look out. Here comes the rain!”
They ran into the restaurant through the first hissing sheet of the
shower and sat at a table near a window watching the rain drops dance
and flicker on the green iron tables. A scent of wet earth and the
mushroom-like odor of sodden leaves came in borne on damp gusts through
the open door. A waiter closed the glass doors and bolted them.
“He wants to keep out the spring. He can't,” said Andrews.
They smiled at each other over their coffee cups. They were in sympathy
again.
When the rain stopped they walked across wet fields by a foot path full
of little clear puddles that reflected the blue sky and the white-and
amber-tinged clouds where the shadows were light purplish-grey. They
walked slowly arm in arm, pressing their bodies together. They were very
tired, they did not know why and stopped often to rest leaning against
the damp boles of trees. Beside a pond pale blue and amber and silver
from the reflected sky, they found under a big beech tree a patch of
wild violets, which Jeanne picked greedily, mixing them with the little
crimson-tipped daisies in the tight bouquet. At the suburban railway
station, they sat silent, side by side on a bench, sniffing the flowers
now and then, so sunk in languid weariness that they could hardly summon
strength to climb into a seat on top of a third class coach, which was
crowded with people coming home from a day in the country. Everybody
had violets and crocuses and twigs with buds on them. In people's stiff,
citified clothes lingered a smell of wet fields and sprouting woods.
All the girls shrieked and threw their arms round the men when the train
went through a tunnel or under a bridge. Whatever happened, everybody
laughed. When the train arrived in the station, it was almost with
reluctance that they left it, as if they felt that from that moment
their work-a-day lives began again. Andrews and Jeanne walked down the
platform without touching each other. Their fingers were stained and
sticky from touching buds and crushing young sappy leaves and grass
stalks. The air of the city seemed dense and unbreathable after the
scented moisture of the fields.
They dined at a little restaurant on the Quai Voltaire and afterwards
walked slowly towards the Place St. Michel, feeling the wine and the
warmth of the food sending new vigor into their tired bodies. Andrews
had his arm round her shoulder and they talked in low intimate voices,
hardly moving their lips, looking long at the men and women they saw
sitting twined in each other's arms on benches, at the couples of boys
and girls that kept passing them, talking slowly and quietly, as they
were, bodies pressed together as theirs were.
“How many lovers there are,” said Andrews.
“Are we lovers?” asked Jeanne with a curious little laugh.
“I wonder.... Have you ever been crazily in love, Jeanne?”
“I don't know. There was a boy in Laon named Marcelin. But I was a
little fool then. The last news of him was from Verdun.”
“Have you had many... like I am?”
“How sentimental we are,” she cried laughing.
“No. I wanted to know. I know so little of life,” said Andrews.
“I have amused myself, as best I could,” said Jeanne in a serious
tone. “But I am not frivolous.... There have been very few men I have
liked.... So I have had few friends... do you want to call them lovers?
But lovers are what married women have on the stage.... All that sort of
thing is very silly.”
“Not so very long ago,” said Andrews, “I used to dream of being
romantically in love, with people climbing up the ivy on castle walls,
and fiery kisses on balconies in the moonlight.”
“Like at the Opera Comique,” cried Jeanne laughing.
“That was all very silly. But even now, I want so much more of life than
life can give.”
They leaned over the parapet and listened to the hurrying swish of the
river, now soft and now loud, where the reflections of the lights on the
opposite bank writhed like golden snakes.
Andrews noticed that there was someone beside them. The faint, greenish
glow from the lamp on the quai enabled him to recognize the lame boy he
had talked to months ago on the Butte.
“I wonder if you'll remember me,” he said.
“You are the American who was in the Restaurant, Place du Terte, I don't
remember when, but it was long ago.”
They shook hands.
“But you are alone,” said Andrews.
“Yes, I am always alone,” said the lame boy firmly. He held out his hand
again.
“Au revoir,” said Andrews.
“Good luck!” said the lame boy. Andrews heard his crutch tapping on the
pavement as he went away along the quai.
“Jeanne,” said Andrews, suddenly, “you'll come home with me, won't you?”
“But you have a friend living with you.”
“He's gone to Brussels. He won't be back till tomorrow.”
“I suppose one must pay for one's dinner,” said Jeanne maliciously.
“Good God, no.” Andrews buried his face in his hands. The singsong
of the river pouring through the bridges, filled his ears. He wanted
desperately to cry. Bitter desire that was like hatred made his flesh
tingle, made his hands ache to crush her hands in them.
“Come along,” he said gruffly.
“I didn't mean to say that,” she said in a gentle, tired voice. “You
know, I'm not a very nice person.” The greenish glow of the lamp lit
up the contour of one of her cheeks as she tilted her head up, and
glimmered in her eyes. A soft sentimental sadness suddenly took hold
of Andrews; he felt as he used to feel when, as a very small child, his
mother used to tell him Br' Rabbit stories, and he would feel himself
drifting helplessly on the stream of her soft voice, narrating, drifting
towards something unknown and very sad, which he could not help.
They started walking again, past the Pont Neuf, towards the glare of the
Place St. Michel. Three names had come into Andrews's head, “Arsinoe,
Berenike, Artemisia.” For a little while he puzzled over them, and then
he remembered that Genevieve Rod had the large eyes and the wide, smooth
forehead and the firm little lips the women had in the portraits that
were sewn on the mummy cases in the Fayum. But those patrician women of
Alexandria had not had chestnut hair with a glimpse of burnished copper
in it; they might have dyed it, though!
“Why are you laughing?” asked Jeanne.
“Because things are so silly.”
“Perhaps you mean people are silly,” she said, looking up at him out of
the corners of her eyes.
“You're right.”
They walked in silence till they reached Andrews's door.
“You go up first and see that there's no one there,” said Jeanne in a
business-like tone.
Andrews's hands were cold. He felt his heart thumping while he climbed
the stairs.
The room was empty. A fire was ready to light in the small fireplace.
Andrews hastily tidied up the table and kicked under the bed some soiled
clothes that lay in a heap in a corner. A thought came to him: how
like his performances in his room at college when he had heard that a
relative was coming to see him.
He tiptoed downstairs.
“Bien. Tu peux venir, Jeanne,” he said.
She sat down rather stiffly in the straight-backed armchair beside the
fire.
“How pretty the fire is,” she said.
“Jeanne, I think I'm crazily in love with you,” said Andrews in an
excited voice.
“Like at the Opera Comique.” She shrugged her shoulders. “The room's
nice,” she said. “Oh, but, what a big bed!”
“You're the first woman who's been up here in my time, Jeanne.... Oh,
but this uniform is frightful.”
Andrews thought suddenly of all the tingling bodies constrained into
the rigid attitudes of automatons in uniforms like this one; of all the
hideous farce of making men into machines. Oh, if some gesture of his
could only free them all for life and freedom and joy. The thought
drowned everything else for the moment.
“But you pulled a button off,” cried Jeanne laughing hysterically. “I'll
just have to sew it on again.”
“Never mind. If you knew how I hated them.”
“What white skin you have, like a woman's. I suppose that's because you
are blond,” said Jeanne.
The sound of the door being shaken vigorously woke Andrews. He got up
and stood in the middle of the floor for a moment without being able
to collect his wits. The shaking of the door continued, and he heard
Walters's voice crying “Andy, Andy.” Andrews felt shame creeping up
through him like nausea. He felt a passionate disgust towards himself
and Jeanne and Walters. He had an impulse to move furtively as if he had
stolen something. He went to the door and opened it a little.
“Say, Walters, old man,” he said, “I can't let you in.... I've got
a girl with me. I'm sorry.... I thought you wouldn't get back till
tomorrow.”
“You're kidding, aren't you?” came Walters's voice out of the dark hall.
“No.” Andrews shut the door decisively and bolted it again.
Jeanne was still asleep. Her black hair had come undone and spread over
the pillow. Andrews pulled the covers up about her carefully.
Then he got into the other bed, where he lay awake a long time, staring
at the ceiling.