BACK TO THE BLACK CAT
About three o’clock in the afternoon, the van, containing Fifi and her
wardrobe, drew up before the tall old house in the street of the Black
Cat where she had lived ever since she was a little, black-eyed child,
who still cried for her mother, and who would not be comforted except
upon Cartouche’s knee. How familiar, how actual, how delightfully
redolent of home was the narrow little street! Fifi saw it in her
mind’s eye long before she reached it, and in her gladness of heart
sang snatches of songs like the one Toto thought was made for him,
_Le petit mousse noir_. As the van clattered into the street, Fifi,
sitting on her boxes, craned her neck out to watch a certain garret
window, and from thence she heard two short, rapturous barks. It was
Toto. Fifi, jumping down, opened the house door, and ran headlong up
the dark, narrow well-known stair. Half way up, she met Toto, jumping
down the steps two at a time. Fifi caught him to her heart, and wept
plentifully, tears of joy.
But there was some one else to see--and that was Cartouche, who was
always in his room at that hour.
“Now, Toto,” said Fifi, as she slipped softly up the stairs, still
squeezing him, “I am about to make a formal offer of my hand to
Cartouche; and mind, you are not to interrupt me with barking and
whining and scratching. It is very awkward to be interrupted on such
occasions, and you must behave yourself suitably to the situation.”
“Yap!” assented Toto.
The door to Cartouche’s room was a half-door, the upper part of glass.
This upper half-door was a little ajar, and Fifi caught sight of
Cartouche. He was sitting on his poor bed, with a large piece of tin
before him, which he was transforming into a medieval shield. He was
hard at work--for who ever saw Cartouche idle? But once or twice he
stopped, and picked up something lying on the table before him, and
looked at it. Fifi recognized it at once. It was a little picture of
herself, taken long ago, when she used to sit on Cartouche’s knee and
beg him to tell her stories. Fifi felt a lump in her throat, and
called out softly and tremulously:
“Cartouche! I am here. It is Fifi.”
Cartouche dropped his tools as if lightning-struck, and turned toward
the door--and there was Fifi’s smiling face peering at him.
He went straight to the door and opened the upper part wide. Fifi
saw that he was quite pale, though his dark and expressive eyes were
burning, and it was plain to her that he was consumed with love and
longing for her--but he was almost cross when he spoke.
“What brings you here, Fifi?” he asked.
“Everything that is good. First, Louis Bourcet has jilted me--” and
Fifi capered gleefully with Toto in her arms.
“Is that anything to be merry about?” inquired Cartouche, sternly; but
Fifi saw that his strong brown hand trembled as it lay on the sill of
the half-door.
“Indeed it is--if you knew Louis Bourcet--and he did it because of my
nobility of soul.”
“Humph,” said Cartouche.
“It was in this manner. You remember, Cartouche, the letter you wrote
me three days ago, in which you advised me to give all my fortune to
the fund for soldiers’ orphans?”
“No,” tartly answered Cartouche. “I never wrote you any such letter.”
“Listen,” said Fifi, sweetly, and taking from her pocket Cartouche’s
letter, she read aloud:
“‘You might follow the Empress’ example, and going in your coach and
six, with outriders, to the banking-house of Lafitte, make a little
gift of a hundred thousand francs to the fund for the soldiers’
orphans.’
“I did not have a coach and six, with outriders, nor even a hundred
thousand francs to give,” continued Fifi, putting the letter, for
future reference, in her pocket, “as I had spent almost ten thousand
on clothes and monkeys and beds. And I also saved enough to buy some
gowns that will put Julie Campionet’s nose out of joint--but I had
nearly ninety thousand francs to give--and I dressed myself up as an
old woman--”
“It was all over Paris this morning,” cried Cartouche, striking his
forehead, “I read it myself in the newspaper! Oh, Fifi, Fifi, what
madness!” and Cartouche walked wildly about the room.
“Madness, do you call it?” replied Fifi, with spirit. “This comes of
taking your advice. I had meant to spend the money on any foolish thing
I could find to buy that was worth nothing, and never could be worth
anything; and when your letter came, I thought, ‘here is a sensible way
to spend it’--for I was obliged to get rid of it. I never had a happy
moment since I had the money--and I must say, Cartouche, I think you
behaved very badly to me, in never making me the slightest apology for
giving me the ticket that drew the money, even after you saw it made me
miserable.”
Here Fifi assumed an offended air, to which Cartouche, walking about
distractedly, paid no attention whatever, only crying out at intervals:
“Oh, Fifi, what makes you behave so! What will you do now?”
Fifi drew off, now genuinely contemptuous and indignant.
“Do?” she asked in a tone of icy contempt. “Do you think that an
actress who has given away her whole fortune of ninety thousand francs
and whose grandfather was cousin to the Pope will want an engagement?”
“But the newspapers don’t know who gave the money,” said Cartouche,
weakly. “All of them this morning said that--and the Emperor has had
published in the _Moniteur_ an official request that the giver will
make herself known, so that she may receive the thanks in person of
himself and the Empress.”
“Better and better,” cried Fifi. “Ten francs the week more will
Duvernet have to pay me for receiving the thanks of the Emperor and
Empress.” And then with an access of hauteur she added: “You must know
very little of the theatrical profession, Cartouche, if you suppose I
intend to let the newspapers remain in ignorance of who gave the money.
Cartouche, in some respects, you know about as little concerning our
profession as the next one. You never had the least idea of the value
of advertising.”
“Perhaps not,” replied Cartouche, stung by her tone, “all I know is,
the value of hard work. And now, I suppose, having thrown away the
chance of marrying a worthy man in a respectable walk of life, you will
proceed to marry some showy creature for his fine clothes, or his long
pedigree, and then be miserable forever after.”
“Oh, no,” answered Fifi, sweetly. “The man I intend to marry is not
at all showy. He is as plain as the kitchen knife--and as for fine
clothes and a long pedigree, ha! ha!” Fifi pinched Toto, who seemed to
laugh with her.
Cartouche remained silent a whole minute, and then said calmly:
“You seem to have fixed upon the man.”
“Yes, Toto and I have agreed upon a suitable match for me. Haven’t we,
Toto?”
“Yap, yap, yap!” barked Toto.
“Have you consulted any one about this?” asked Cartouche in a low
voice, after a moment.
“No one but Toto,” replied Fifi, pinching Toto’s ear.
Cartouche raised his arms in despair. He could only groan:
“Oh, Fifi! Oh, Fifi!”
“Don’t ‘Oh Fifi’ me any more, Cartouche, after your behavior to me,”
cried Fifi indignantly, “and after I have taken your advice and given
the money away, and Louis Bourcet has jilted me--as he did as soon as
he found I had no fortune--”
“Didn’t I tell you he would?”
“I didn’t need anybody to tell me that. Louis Bourcet is one of the
virtuous who make one sick of virtue. But at least after you made him
jilt me--”
“_I_ made him jilt you!”
“Certainly you did. How many times shall I have to prove to you that
it was you who put it into my head to give the money away? And now, I
want to ask, having caused me to lose the chance of marrying the most
correct young man in Paris, you--you--ought to marry me yourself!”
Fifi said this last in a very low, sweet voice, her cheek resting upon
Toto’s sleek, black head, her elbow on the sill of the half-door.
Cartouche walked quite to the other end of the room and stood with his
back to Fifi, and said not one word.
Fifi waited a minute or two, Cartouche maintaining his strange silence.
Then, Fifi, glancing down, saw on a little table within the room, and
close to the half-door, a stick of chalk. With that she wrote in large
white letters on Toto’s black back:
_Cartouche, I love you_--
and tossed Toto into the room. He trotted up to Cartouche and lay down
at his feet.
Fifi saw Cartouche give a great start when he picked up the dog, and
Toto uttered a little pleading whine which was quite human in its
entreaty. Being a very astute dog, he knew that Cartouche was not
treating Fifi right, and so, pleaded for her.
Fifi, calmly watching Cartouche, saw that he was deeply agitated, and
she was not in the least disturbed by it. Presently, dropping Toto,
Cartouche strode toward the half-door, over which Fifi leaned.
“Fifi,” he cried, in a voice of agony, “why do you torture me so? You
know that I love you; and you know that I ought not to let you marry
me--me, almost old enough to be your father, poor, obscure, half
crippled, Fifi. I shall never forget the anguish of the first day I
knew that I loved you; it was the day I found you acting with the
players in the street. You were but sixteen, and I had loved you until
then as a child, as a little sister--and suddenly, I was overwhelmed
with a lover’s love for you. But I swore to myself, on my honor, never
to let you know it--never to speak a word of love to you--”
The strong man trembled, and fell, rather than sat upon a chair. Fifi,
trembling a little herself, but still smiling, answered:
“And you have kept your vow. I remember that day well--it was the first
time you ever spoke an angry word to me. You have spoken many since,
you hard-hearted Cartouche.”
To this Cartouche made no answer but to bury his face in his lean,
brown hands, that bore the marks of honest toil. Fifi continued briskly:
“Cartouche, open this lower door. It is fast.”
Cartouche only shook his head.
Then Fifi, glancing about, saw a rickety old chair at the head of the
stairs, and noiselessly fetching it, she put it against the door,
stepped up on it; a second step on the little table by the door, and
a third step on the floor, brought her in the room, and close to
Cartouche. She laid one hand upon his shoulder--with the other she
picked up Toto--and said, in a wheedling voice:
“Cartouche, shall we be married this day fortnight?”
Cartouche made a faint effort to push her away, but the passion in him
rose up lion-like, and mastered him. He seized Fifi in his strong arms
and devoured her rosy lips with kisses. Then, dropping her as suddenly,
he cried wildly:
“No, no! It is not right, Fifi--I can not do you so cruel a wrong!”
“You are almost as bad as Louis Bourcet,” remarked Fifi, straightening
her curly hair, which was all over her face. “Nevertheless, I shall
marry you this day fortnight.”
For answer, Cartouche vaulted over the half-door, in spite of his bad
leg, and was gone clattering down the stairs. Fifi listened as the
sound died away, and then ran to the window to see him go out of the
house and walk off, as fast as he could, down the street of the Black
Cat.
“Toto,” said Fifi to her friend, taking him up in her arms: “We--you
and I--are not good enough for Cartouche, but all the same, we mean
to have him. I can not live without him--that is, I will not, which
comes to the same thing--and all the other men I have ever known seem
small and mean alongside of Cartouche--” which showed that Fifi, as she
claimed, really had some sense.
As for Cartouche, he walked along through the narrow streets into
the crowded thoroughfare, full of shadows even then, although it was
still early in the soft, spring afternoon. He neither knew nor cared
where he was going except that he must fly from Fifi’s witching eyes
and tender words and sweet caresses. His heart was pounding so that
he could fancy others heard it besides himself. This marriage was
clearly impossible--it was not to be thought of. Fifi, in spite of her
rashness and throwing away of her fortune, was no fool. She had not,
as Cartouche feared, assumed a style of living that would have made
a hundred thousand francs a mere bagatelle. What she had squandered,
she had squandered deliberately for a purpose; what she had given had
been given to a good cause, for Fifi, of all women, best knew her own
mind. And to think that she should have taken up this strange notion to
marry him--after she had seen something so far superior--so Cartouche
thought. And what was to be done? If necessary, he would leave the
Imperial Theater, and go far, far away; but what then would become of
Fifi, alone and unprotected, rash and young and beautiful?
Turning these things over tumultuously in his mind, Cartouche found
himself in front of the shop where he had bought Fifi the red cloak.
There was a mirror in the window, and Cartouche stood and looked at
himself in it. The mirror stiffened his resolution.
“No,” he said. “Fifi must not throw herself away on such a looking
fellow. I love her--I love her too well for that.”
A church clock chimed six. Cartouche came out of his troubled day-dream
with a start--he was already due at the theater. He ran as fast as his
bad leg would allow him, and for the first time in the eight years he
had been employed there, was late.
Duvernet, the manager, was walking the floor of his dingy little office
and tearing his hair. He was dressed for the part of the Cid Campeador
in the drama of the evening. Duvernet never made the mistake of acting
a trivial part. He clattered about in a full suit of tin armor, but
had inadvertently clapped his hat on his head. Although there was but
little time to spare, the manager was obliged to pour out his woes to
Cartouche.
“Julie Campionet saw Fifi return, with all her boxes,” he groaned;
“and--well, you know Julie Campionet--I have had the devil’s own time
the whole afternoon. Then Fifi marched herself over here--the minx. I
called her Fifi, at first. She drew herself up like an offended empress
and said, ‘Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, if you please.’ She then informed
me, with an air of grand condescension that she might return here as
leading lady, and told me, quite negligently, that she was the person
who gave the ninety thousand francs to the soldiers’ orphans’ fund.
You would have thought she was in the habit of giving ninety thousand
francs to charity every morning before breakfast. She swore she did not
intend to acknowledge it until she had got a place as leading lady at
a theater that suited her; likewise that she proposed to be billed as
Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, cousin to the Holy Father, and to have the
story of her relationship to the Pope published in every newspaper in
Paris, and demanded fifty francs the week. The advertising alone is
worth a hundred francs the week; but you know, Cartouche, no woman on
earth could stand a hundred francs the week and keep sane. Then, she
tells me that she has a magnificent wardrobe--she wore that brooch
in here, which I have never been able to satisfy myself is real or
not--and took such a high tone altogether that I began to ask myself
if I were the manager of this theater or was Fifi. And then the
last information she gave me was that she was to marry you this day
fortnight--”
“Ah!” cried Cartouche, gloomily.
“And said if I didn’t give her back her old place as leading lady that
I would have to part with you. I said something about Julie Campionet,
and being my wife, and so on, and then Fifi flew into a royal rage,
saying she would settle with Julie Campionet herself. Then Julie came
rushing into the room, and she and Fifi had it out in great style.
You never heard such a noise in your life--it was like killing pigs,
and Julie fell in my arms and screamed to me to protect her, and Fifi
started that infernal dog of hers to barking, and there was a devil
of a row, and how it ended I don’t know, except that both of them are
vowing vengeance on me. But one thing is sure--I can’t let a chance go
of securing the Pope’s cousin, who won the first prize in the lottery
and gave away ninety thousand francs. And then--what Julie--”
The manager groaned and buried his head in his hands. Like the
unfortunate Louis Bourcet, all he could make out was, that whatever he
did would be highly imprudent.
It was already late, and there was not another moment to lose, so
Cartouche had to run away and leave the manager to his misery.
The performance was hardly up to the mark that night. Sensational tales
of Fifi’s return had flown like wildfire about the theater. She was
commonly reported to have come back in a coach and pair, with a van
full of huge boxes, all crammed with the most superb costumes. Such
stories were naturally disquieting to Julie Campionet, and together
with her scene in the afternoon, impaired her performance visibly.
As for Fifi, she was at that moment established in her old room,
which luckily was vacant, and was cooking a pair of pork chops over
a charcoal stove--and was perfectly happy. So was Toto, who barked
vociferously, and had to be held in Fifi’s arms, to keep his paws off
the red-hot stove. There was a bottle of wine, some sausages, and
onions and cheese, and a box of highly colored bonbons, for which Fifi
had rashly expended three francs. But it is not every day, thought
Fifi, that one comes home to one’s best beloved--and so she made a
little feast for Cartouche and herself.
Cartouche was late that night, and trying to avoid Fifi, he mounted
softly to his garret. As he approached Fifi’s door, he saw the light
through a chink. Fifi heard his step, quiet as it was, and opening the
door wide, cried out gaily:
“Here is supper ready for you, Cartouche, and Toto and I waiting for
you.”
Cartouche could not resist. He had meant to--but after all, he was but
human--and Fifi was so sweet--so sweet to him. He came in, therefore,
awkwardly enough, and feeling like a villain the while, he sat down at
the rickety little table, on which Fifi had spread a feast, seasoned
with love.
“Cartouche,” she said presently, when they were eating and drinking,
“you must get a holiday for this day fortnight.”
“What for?” asked Cartouche, gnawing his chop--Fifi cooked chops
beautifully.
“Because that is the day we are to be married,” briskly responded Fifi.
Cartouche put down his chop.
“Fifi,” he said. “You will break my heart. Why will you persist in
throwing yourself away on me?”
“Dear me!” cried Fifi to Toto, “how very silly Cartouche is to-night!
And what a horrid fiancé he makes--worse than Louis Bourcet.”
Then Fifi told him about some of the tricks she had played on poor
Louis, and Cartouche was obliged to laugh.
“At least, Fifi,” he said, “you shan’t marry me, until you have
consulted his Holiness.”
“And his Majesty,” replied Fifi gravely. “Who would think, to see us
supping on pork chops and onions, that our marriage concerned such very
great people!”
Cartouche went to his garret presently, still drowned in perplexities,
but with a wild feeling of rapture that seemed to make a new heaven and
a new earth for him.
Fifi, next morning, proceeded to lay out her plans. She did not go near
the theater until the afternoon. Then she put on her yellow and purple
brocade, her large red and green satin cloak, her huge hat and feathers
and reinforced with the alleged diamond brooch, and sending out for a
cab, ordered it to carry her and her magnificence across the street to
the manager’s private office.
Duvernet, thinking Fifi had come to her senses, and would ask, instead
of demanding, her place back, received her coolly. Fifi was charmingly
affable.
“I only called to ask, Monsieur,” she said, “if you could tell me how
to catch the diligence which goes out to Fontainebleau. I wish to go
out to see his Holiness, who, as you know, is my relative, and as such,
I desire his formal consent to my marriage to Cartouche.”
Fifi was careful not to say that she was the Pope’s relative; the Pope
was _her_ relative.
Duvernet, somewhat disconcerted by Fifi’s superb air, replied that the
diligence passed the corner, two streets below, at nine in the morning,
and one in the afternoon.
“Thank you,” responded Fifi. “I shall go out, to-morrow, at one
o’clock. I could not think of getting up at the unearthly hour
necessary to take the morning diligence. And can you tell me, Monsieur,
about the omnibus that passes the Tuileries? The Emperor has had a
request printed in the _Moniteur_, asking that the lady who made the
gift of ninety thousand francs to the soldiers’ orphans should declare
herself--and I have no objection to going in the omnibus as far as the
gates of the Tuileries. Then, I shall get a carriage.”
Duvernet was so thunderstruck at Fifi’s grandeur, that he mumbled
something quite unintelligible about the omnibus. Fifi, however,
was perfectly well acquainted with the ways both of the omnibus and
diligence, and only inquired about them to impress upon Duvernet
the immense gulf between the Fifi of yesterday and the Mademoiselle
Chiaramonti of to-day. She finally rose and sailed off, but returned
to ask the amazed and disgusted Duvernet to get her a cab to take her
across the street.
“I can walk, Monsieur,” she said condescendingly, “except that I am
afraid of ruining my clothes. I carry on my back nearly four thousand
francs’ worth of clothes.”
Duvernet, still staggered by her splendors, had to search the
neighborhood for a cab--cabs were not much in demand in that quarter.
But at last he found one, which transported Fifi and her grandeur
across the way. It was clearly impossible that so much elegance should
go on foot.
That night, again, she made a little supper for Cartouche, and
Cartouche, feeling himself a guilty wretch, again went in and ate it,
and basked in the sunlight of Fifi’s eyes.