downward through the bars about the lift-shaft.
"Do you reckon," spoke a voice--a most agreeable voice,--"we are in any
danger?"
The owner of the voice was tall; not even the agitation of the moment
prevented my observing that, big as I am, her eyes were almost on a
level with my shoulder. They were not unpleasant eyes, and a stray
dream or two yet lingered under their heavy lids. The owner of the
voice wore a strange garment that was fluffy and pink,--pale pink like
the lining of a sea-shell--and billows of white and the ends of various
blue ribbons peeped out about her neck. I made mental note of the fact
that disordered hair is not necessarily unbecoming; it sometimes has
the effect of an unusually heavy halo set about the face of a
half-awakened angel.
"It would appear," said I, meditatively, "that, in consideration of our
being on the fifth floor, with the lift-shaft drawing splendidly, and
the stairs winding about it,--except the two lower flights, which have
just fallen in,--and in consideration of the fire department's probable
incompetence to extinguish anything more formidable than a tar-barrel,
--yes, it would appear, I think, that we might go further than
'dangerous' and find a less appropriate adjective to describe the
situation."
"You mean we cannot get down?" The beautiful voice was tremulous.
And my silence made reply.
"Well, then," she suggested, cheerfully, after due reflection, "since
we can't go down, why not go up?"
As a matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. We were on the top
floor of the hotel, and beside us, in the niche corresponding to the
stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly-whitewashed
trapdoor in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, I pushed against this
trap-door and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top
of the ladder, I looked about me on a dim expanse of tiles and
chimneys; yet farther off were the huddled roofs and gables of Liége,
and just a stray glimpse of the Meuse; and above me brooded a clear sky
and the naked glory of the moon.
3
I lowered my head with a distinct sigh of relief.
"I say," I called, "it is infinitely nicer up here--superb view of the
city, and within a minute's drop of the square! Better come up."
"Go first," said she; and subsequently I held for a moment a very
slender hand--a ridiculously small hand for a woman whose eyes were
almost on a level with my shoulder,--and we two stood together on the
roof of the Hôtel Continental. We enjoyed, as I had predicted, an
unobstructed view of Liége and of the square, wherein two toy-like
engines puffed viciously and threw impotent threads of water against
the burning hotel beneath us, and, at times, on the heads of an excited
throng erratically clad.
But I looked down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small
explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the café; and, oh, Lord! there
goes the only decent Scotch in all Liége!"
"There is Mamma!" she cried, excitedly; "there!" She pointed to a stout
woman, who, with a purple? shawl wrapped about her head, was wringing
her hands as heartily as a bird-cage, held in one of them, would
permit. "And she has saved Bill Bryan!"
"In that case," said I, "I suppose it is clearly my duty to rescue the
remaining member of the family. You see," I continued, in bending over
the trap-door and tugging at the ladder, "this thing is only about
twenty feet long; but the kitchen wing of the hotel is a little less
than that distance from the rear of the house behind it; and with this
as a bridge I think we might make it. In any event, the roof will be
done for in a half-hour, and it is eminently worth trying." I drew the
ladder upward.
Then I dragged this ladder down the gentle slant of the roof, through a
maze of ghostly chimneys and dim skylights, to the kitchen wing, which
was a few feet lower than the main body of the building. I skirted the
chimney and stepped lightly over the eaves, calling, "Now then!" when a
muffled cry, followed by a crash in the courtyard beneath, shook my
heart into my mouth. I turned, gasping; and found the girl lying safe,
but terrified, on the verge of the roof.
"It was a bucket," she laughed, "and I stumbled over it,--and it
fell--and--and I nearly did,--and I am frightened!"
And somehow I was holding her hand in mine, and my mouth was making
irrelevant noises, and I was trembling. "It was close, but--look here,
you must pull yourself together!" I pleaded; "because we haven't, as it
were, the time for airy badinage and repartee--just now."
"I can't," she cried, hysterically. "Oh, I am so frightened! I can't!"
"You see," I said, with careful patience, "we must go on. I hate to
seem too urgent, but we _must_, do you understand?" I waved my hand
toward the east. "Why, look!" said I, as a thin tongue of flame leaped
through the open trap-door and flickered wickedly for a moment against
the paling gray of the sky.
She saw and shuddered. "I'll come," she murmured, listlessly, and rose
to her feet.
4
I heaved another sigh of relief, and waving her aside from the ladder,
dragged it after me to the eaves of the rear wing. As I had foreseen,
this ladder reached easily to the eaves of the house behind the rear
wing, and formed a passable though unsubstantial-looking bridge. I
regarded it disapprovingly.
"It will only bear one," said I; "and we will have to crawl over
separately after all. Are you up to it?"
"Please go first," said she, very quiet. And, after gazing into her
face for a moment, I crept over gingerly, not caring to look down into
the abyss beneath.
Then I spent a century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure
that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair's breadth
each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not
remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the
hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the
roof of the Councillor von Hollwig.
5
"You are," I cried, with conviction, "the bravest, the most--er--the
bravest woman I ever knew!" I heaved a little sigh, but this time of
content. "For I wonder," said I, in my soul, "if you have any idea what
a beauty you are! what a wonderful, unspeakable beauty you are! Oh, you
are everything that men ever imagined in dreams that left them weeping
for sheer happiness--and more! You are--you, and I have held you in my
arms for a moment; and, before high heaven, to repurchase that
privilege I would consent to the burning of three or four more hotels
and an odd city or so to boot!" But, aloud, I only said, "We are quite
safe now, you know."
She laughed, bewilderingly. "I suppose," said she, "the next thing is
to find a trap-door."
But there were, so far as we could discover, no trapdoors in the roof
of the Councillor von Hollwig, or in the neighbouring roofs; and, after
searching three of them carefully, I suggested the propriety of waiting
till dawn to be melodramatically rescued.
"You see," I pointed out, "everybody is at the fire over yonder. But we
are quite safe here, I would say, with an entire block of houses to
promenade on; moreover, we have cheerful company, eligible central
location in the very heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a
big fire at exactly the proper distance. Therefore," I continued, and
with severity, "you will please have the kindness to explain your
motives for wandering about the corridors of a burning hotel at four
o'clock in the morning."
She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. "I sleep
very soundly," said she, "and we did both museums and six churches and
the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry
today,--and the cries awakened me,--and I reckon Mamma lost her head."
"And left you," thought I, "left you--to save a canary-bird! Good Lord!
And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well."
"And you?" she asked.
"Ah--oh, yes, me!" I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing
lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to
see them. "I was writing--and I thought that Russian woman had a few
friends to supper,--and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you," I
concluded, with a fine coherence.
She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled
quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this
interesting feat. "Verses?" said she, considering my slippers in a new
light.
"Yes," I admitted, guiltily--"of Helen."
She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly
spoken. "Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena."
"Late of Troy Town," said I, in explanation.
"Oh!" The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this
time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. "I should think,"
said my compatriot, "that live women would be more--inspiring"
"Surely," I assented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. "But, you
see, she is alive--to me." And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word.
"One would gather," said she, meditatively, "that you have an
unrequited attachment for Helen of Troy."
I sighed a melancholy assent. The great eyes opened to their utmost.
The effect was as disconcerting as that of a ship firing a broadside at
you, but pleasanter. "Tell me all about it," said she, coaxingly.
"I have always loved her," I said, with gravity. "Long ago, when I was
a little chap, I had a book--_Stories of the Trojan War_, or something
of the sort. And there I first read of Helen--and remembered. There
were pictures--outline pictures,--of quite abnormally straight-nosed
warriors, with flat draperies which amply demonstrated that the laws of
gravity were not yet discovered; and the pictures of slender goddesses,
who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their
dressing. Oh, the book was full of pictures,--and Helen's was the most
manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew--I knew, even then, of
her beauty, of that flawless beauty which made men's hearts as water
and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for the woman at sight of
whom they had put away all memories of distant homes and wives; that
flawless beauty which buoyed the Trojans through the ten years of
fighting and starvation, just with delight in gazing upon Queen Helen
day by day, and with the joy of seeing her going about their streets.
For I remembered!" And as I ended, I sighed effectively.
"I know," said she.
"'Or ever the knightly years had gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave.'"
"Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you--er--I mean, there goes
the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought
of the trap-door. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at
those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled
inward like a house of cards; "they are splashing, actually splashing,
like waves over a breakwater!"
I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to
encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan
warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found
death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they
died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they
had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness.
She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard
some laughing words of hers in passing, and I treasured them as men
treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps--oh, day of days!--to me, in
a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat
and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien
speech. I remembered--even as a boy, I remembered."
She cast back her head and laughed merrily. "I reckon," said she, "you
are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met."
"No," I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, "that tale
about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen--and the gods be praised for
it!--can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of
unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently
as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose,
with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very
certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she
"Abides the symbol of all loveliness,
Of beauty ever stainless in the stress
Of warring lusts and fears.
"For she is to each man the one woman that he might have loved
perfectly. She is as old as youth, she is more old than April even, and
she is as ageless. And, again like youth and April, this Helen goes
about the world in varied garments, and to no two men is her face the
same. Oh, very often she transmutes her fleshly covering. But through
countless ages I, like every man alive, have followed her, and fought
for her, and won her, and have lost her in the end,--but always loving
her as every man must do. And I prefer to think that some day--" But my
voice here died into a whisper, which was in part due to emotion and
partly to an inability to finish the sentence satisfactorily. The logic
of my verses when thus paraphrased from memory, seemed rather vague.
"Yes--like Pythagoras" she said, a bit at random. "Oh, I know. There
really must be something in it, I have often thought, because you
actually do remember having done things before sometimes."
"And why not? as the March Hare very sensibly demanded." But now my
voice was earnest. "Yes, I believe that Helen always comes. Is it
simply a proof that I, too, am qualified to sit next to the Hatter?" I
spread out my hands in a helpless little gesture. "I do not know. But I
believe that she will come,--and by and by pass on, of course, as Helen
always does."
"You will know her?" she queried, softly.
Now I at last had reached firm ground. "She will be very tall," I said,
"very tall and exquisite,--like a young birch-tree, you know, when its
new leaves are whispering over to one another the secrets of spring.
Yes, that is a ridiculous sounding simile, but it expresses the general
effect of her--the _coup d'oeil_, so to speak,--quite perfectly.
Moreover, her hair will be a miser's dream of gold; and it will hang
heavily about a face that will be--quite indescribable, just as the
dawn yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will
flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black,
good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be
deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks."
But now I could not see her eyes.
"No," I conceded, "I was wrong. For when men talk to her as--as they
cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, almost like
smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a
great fire, such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and
the slain bodies were soft under her stumbling feet, as she fled
through flaming Troy Town. And then I shall know her."
My companion sighed; and the woes of centuries weighed down her eyelids
obstinately. "It is bad enough," she lamented, "to have lost all one's
clothes--that new organdie was a dream, and I had never worn it; but to
find yourself in a dressing-gown--at daybreak, on a strange roof--and
with an unintroduced lunatic--is positively terrible!"
The unintroduced lunatic rose to his feet and waved his hand toward the
east. The dawn was breaking in angry scarlet and gold that spread like
fire over half the visible horizon; the burning hotel shut out the
remaining half with tall flames, which shouldered one another
monotonously, and seemed lustreless against the pure radiance of the
sky. Chill daylight showed in melting patches through the clouds of
black smoke overhead.
It was a world of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of
dawn and the grim splendour of the shifting, roaring conflagration; and
at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there
the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell crackling among
apple-blossoms.
"Ilium is ablaze," I quoted; "and the homes of Pergamos and its
towering walls are now one sheet of flame."
She inspected the scene, critically. "It does look like Ilium," she
admitted. "And that," peering over the eaves into the deserted
by-street, "looks like a milkman."
I was unable to deny this, though an angry concept crossed my mind that
any milkman, with commendable tastes and feelings, would at this moment
be gaping at the fire at the other end of the block, rather than
prosaically measuring quarts at the Councillor's side-entrance. But
there was no help for it, when chance thus unblushingly favoured the
proprieties; in consequence I clung to a water-pipe, and explained the
situation to the milkman, with a fretted mind and King's College
French.
I turned to my companion. She was regarding the burning hotel with an
impersonal expression.
"Now I would give a deal," I thought, "to know just how long you would
prefer that milkman to take in coming back."
12.
_He Faces Himself and Remembers_
Into the lobby of the Hôtel d'Angleterre strolled, an hour later, a
tall young man, in a green dressing-gown, and inquired for Charteris.
The latter, in evening dress, was mournfully breakfasting in his new
quarters.
Charteris sprang to his feet. I saw, with real emotion, that he had
been weeping; but now he was all flippancy. "My dear boy! I have just
torn my hair and the rough drafts of several cablegrams on your
account! Sit down at once, and try the bacon, since, for a wonder, it
is not burnt--and, in passing, I had thought of course that you were."
Instead, I took a drink, and went to sleep upon the nearest sofa.
2
I was very tired, but I awakened about noon and managed to procure
enough clothes to make myself not altogether unpresentable to the
public eye. Charteris had gone already about his own affairs, and I did
not regret it, for I meant, without delay, to follow up my adventure of
the night before.
But when I had come out of the Rue de la Casquette, and was approaching
the statue of Gretry, I came upon a very ornately-dressed woman, who
was about to enter en open carriage. I stared; and preposterous as it
was, I knew that I was not mistaken. And I said aloud, "Signorina!"
It was a long while before she said, "Don't--don't ever call me that
again!" And since the world in general appeared just then to be largely
flavoured with the irresponsibility of dreams, it did not surprise me
that we were presently alone in somebody's sitting-room.
"I have seen you twice in Liége," she said. "I suppose this had to come
about. I would have preferred to avoid it, though. Well! _che sara!_
You don't care for music, do you? No,--otherwise you would have known
earlier that I am Nadine Neroni now."
"Ah!" I said, very quietly. I had heard, as everybody had, a deal
concerning the Neroni. "I think, if you will pardon me, I will not
intrude upon Baron von Anspach's hospitality any longer," I said.
"That is unworthy of you,--no, I mean it would have been unworthy of a
boy we knew of." There was a long pier-glass in these luxurious rooms.
She led me to it now. "Look, Bobbie. We have altered a little, haven't
we? I at least, am unmistakable. 'Their eyes are different, somehow',
you remember. You haven't changed as much,--not outwardly. I think you
are like Dorian Gray. Yes, as soon--as soon as I could afford it, I
read every book you ever talked about, I think. It was damnably foolish
of me. For I've heard things. And there was a girl I tried to help in
London--an Agnès Faroy--"
"Ah!" I said.
"She had your picture even then, poor creature. She kissed it just
before she died. She didn't know that I had ever heard of you. She
never knew. Oh, how _could_ you!" the Neroni said, with something very
like a sob, "Or were you always--just that, at bottom?"
"And have you ever noticed, Mademoiselle Neroni, that every one of us
is several people? In consequence I must confess to have been
wondering--?"
"Well! I wasn't. You won't believe it now, perhaps. And it doesn't
matter, anyhow." Her grave voice lifted and upon a sudden was changed.
"Bobbie, when you had gone I couldn't stand it! I couldn't let you ruin
your life for me, but I could not go on as I had done before--Oh, well,
you'll never understand," she added, wearily. "But Von Anspach had
always wanted me to go with him. So I wrote to him, at the Embassy. And
after all, what is the good of talking--now!"
We two were curiously quiet. "No, I suppose there is no good in talking
now." We stood there, as yet, hand in hand. The mirror was candid. "Oh,
Signorina, I want to laugh as God laughs, and I cannot!"
3
But I lack the heart to set down all that brief and dreary talk of
ours. How does it matter what we said? We two at least knew, even as we
talked, that all we said meant in the outcome, nothing. Yet we talked
awhile and spoke, I think, quite honestly.
She was not unhappy; and there were inbred Lichfeldian traditions which
prompted me to virtuous indignation over her defects in remorse and
misery. There were my memories, too.
"I don't sing very well, of course, but then I'm not dependent on my
singing, you know. Oh, why not be truthful? And Von Anspach always sees
to it I get the tendered of criticism--in print. And, moreover, I've a
deal put by. I'm a miser, _he_ says, and I suppose I am, because I know
what it is to be poor. So when the rainy day comes--as of course it
will,--I'll have quite enough to purchase a serviceable umbrella.
Meanwhile, I have pretty much everything I want. People talk of course,
but it is only on the stage they ever drive you out into a snow-storm.
Besides, they don't talk to _me_."
In fine, I found that the Neroni was a very different being from Miss
Montmorenci....
4
Then I left her. I had not any inclination just now to pursue my fair
Elena. Rather I sat alone in my new bedroom, thinking, confusedly,
first of Amelia Van Orden, and how I danced with her a good eight years
ago; of that woman who had come to me in remote Fairhaven, coming
through the world's gutter, unsullied,--because that much I yet
believe, although I do not know.... She may have been always the same,
even in the old days when Lichfield thought her "fast," and she was
more or less "compromised,"--and years before I met her, a blind,
inexperienced boy. Only she may then have been a better actress than I
suspected.... I thought, in any event, of those execrable rhymes that
likened her to the Lady in _Comus_, moving serene and unafraid among a
rabble of threatening bestial shapes; and I thought of the woman who
would, by this time, be with Von Anspach.
For here again were inbred Lichfieldian traditions of the sort I rarely
dare confess to, even to myself, because they are so patently hidebound
and ridiculous. These traditions told me that this woman, whom I had
loved, was Von Anspach's harlot. I might--and I did--endeavor to be
ironical and to be broadminded and to be up-to-date about the whole
affair, and generally to view the matter through the sophisticated eyes
of the author of The Apostates, that Robert Etheridge Townsend who was
a connoisseur of ironies and human foibles; but these futilities did no
good at all. Lichfield had got at and into me when I was too young to
defend myself; and I could no more alter the inbred traditions of
Lichfield, that were a part of me, than a carpet could change its
texture. My traditions merely told me that the dear woman whom I
remembered had come--in fleeing from discomforts which were unbearable,
if that mattered--to be Von Anspach's harlot: and finding her this, my
traditions declined to be the least bit broadminded. In Lichfield such
women were simply not respectable; nor could you get around that fact
by going to Liége.