The next week saw myself and Howard installed in Paris. We had two
large, comfortable rooms on the second floor, opening into each other,
well furnished and upholstered in every way as sitting-rooms, as most
of the French bedrooms are.
They faced a corner where several boulevards met and diverged, and
there was a constant stream of Paris life flowing beneath our windows
every hour of the day. A balcony ran outside, and on this in the
evening we used to stand and smoke and flick paper balls on to the
heads of the grisettes and the bonnes passing far underneath. On the
ground floor of the hotel was a cafe that extended also over the
pavement with its chairs and tables, and was open to the general public
as well as to those who were staying in the hotel.
Howard and I got on admirably as usual. Although we were so different
we had the common ground of a similarity in intellect. On all strictly
intellectual subjects, in psychological discussions, on points of
artistic merit, we seldom differed. His brain was, when he chose to
exert it, singularly brilliant, and in a companion this compensates me
for everything else almost that is wanting. I could not certainly have
lived in the same intimacy with a fool who had been as high principled,
as moral, and as sober as Howard was the reverse of all these. Our mode
of life was very different, as naturally it would be, since I had come
with a predetermination to do nothing but work, and he with an equally
strong one to idle his days away in the most enjoyable manner he could
invent. For myself, I was fairly content with the prospect before me.
Work I was accustomed to, and it was easy. A new idea for a manuscript
had begun to hover fitfully before my mental vision, and was gradually
absorbing my thoughts into itself. Had I been able to write to and hear
from Lucia I should have been satisfied, but my father had made the
absence of all correspondence between us a sine qua non of my coming
here. When I had heard this I had looked at him with some little
amusement. Such a stipulation as this seemed to me to have only one
interpretation--he hoped and thought I should forget her!
"What is the meaning of this?" I asked. "What can be the benefit of it?
How can the fact of our writing or not writing be of importance? Do you
think I shall ever relinquish Lucia? I am resigned to wait as long as
must be, but I am utterly determined to have her in the end."
To which my father had answered grimly with a smile,--
"Very well, my dear Victor, see that you get her!"
Which remark had made me grind my teeth and then laugh and shrug my
shoulders.
"And you won't permit a letter a month?"
"No."
"Oh, dressed in your little brief authority!" I thought, looking at
him. Then I said--
"Very good--I agree."
"I consider I have your word that you will not write, nor hear from
her, directly or indirectly, within this year?"
"Certainly you have."
And so the matter was settled.
When Lucia heard of it, we met each other's eyes, and she elevated her
eyebrows, and a faint smile curved her lips.
"It will make no difference," she murmured, and nothing more.
After all, I don't know that I cared very greatly about the letters. It
was Lucia herself that I wanted--nothing less. It gives me very little
pleasure to read a letter, and I never have understood the cherishing
locks of hair and dead roses business.
The desire for the presence of the living personality is too
sharp-edged to let me feel satisfaction in substitutory objects and
vague associations. To have put my hand round Lucia's living throat;
yes, that would have been a keen delight, but I was not dead set on
possessing myself of her handkerchief that I might kiss in private. I
had one portrait of her--that was all--and that I rarely looked at.
The first thing I did in Paris was to find a translator for Howard's
poem, which, after a time, appeared in one of the literary papers in
its French dress, and returned to its original title. He came to me
suddenly one evening with a contemporary paper in his hand, and the
flush of gratified talent, and the pride that is its first cousin,
kindling in his face.
"Look here, Vic!" he said; "isn't this first-class? Here's a critique
on my verses, and just see how they crack them up!"
I took the paper and read the paragraph, Howard leaning over my
shoulder and resting his knee on the arm of my chair. When I had
finished I looked up at him.
"Not a word more than it deserves, old man!" I said. "Now you realise,
don't you, what you can be and do if you choose!"
"Yes. Well, really, if all that's true, I ought to make some sort of a
name some day, eh?"
And for a time it seemed that a lasting impression had been made upon
him. He seemed to feel that elation and enthusiasm stir in him which
makes it a joy to the genius to renounce all for his work. With regard
to my own manuscripts, I sent some of them, in English, to one of the
French publishing firms, and there ensued a blank of three weeks. At
the end of that time I received a peremptory note inviting me to call
at their office. When I presented myself I was shown into a bare,
square room, where an august little man was standing, using a silver
toothpick. He was short, with a large-sized lower chest; bald, with a
short, grey beard cut to a sharp point; waxed moustache ends, sticking
out ferociously; and brown eyes, keen with intelligence. He bowed
elaborately.
I could speak French, he supposed.
I assented, and the conversation then went on very fast.
Monsieur's works had been read by their Anglo-French reader and highly
approved. There was no doubt that Monsieur possessed a talent, a talent
that he would say was--colossal. At the same time, these works were all
too English in tone to catch the taste of the Parisian world, and
Monsieur had seemed to put a restraint upon his pen, that rendered his
works a touch too cold.
Great heavens! how I raised my eyebrows at that; remembering that in
England I had been always rejected on account of being too warm.
Now, his proposition was this:--If Monsieur felt disposed to write a
manuscript, in which the scene should be laid in France, and some of
the characters, at least, be French, and also allow himself a little
greater latitude, then he should be delighted to put the manuscript in
the hands of their very best translator, and give it out to an audience
that, above all things, admired vigour.
I heard all this with satisfaction. The offer meant a lot more work for
me, but I did not mind that, with success--dear success--in view. I
closed with his proposition at once, and after some formalities and
details had been gone into and settled, I rushed home to tell Howard.
So, for a time, settled into working intellectual grooves, our life ran
on quietly from day to day with a fair prospect on ahead of us.
And then came an unlucky incident which jerked the wheels of Howard's
existence out of the narrow, hard line of effort, and after that they
ran along anyhow, sometimes on and sometimes off it, and kept me in
dread of a total smash. The Champs Elysees were full of the late
afternoon sunlight, and we sauntered slowly, criticising the occupants
of the various carriages rolling up to the great arch of Napoleon, and
arguing in a broken, desultory way on our usual subject of
talk--literature.
Howard was on the outside, nearest the road, walking on the actual
kerb, and flicking up the leaves in the gutter, as he talked, with the
point of his cane. As we strolled, with our eyes more or less directed
on the string of vehicles moving in the centre of the sunny road, we
noticed one small, black brougham going the same way as ourselves, that
seemed conspicuous by being closed amongst the rest of the open
victorias. Suddenly it detached itself from the line of other carriages
and dashed up alongside of the pavement where we were walking. Its
wheels ground in the gutter, and I caught Howard's arm to draw him more
on to the pavement.
"Look out!" I exclaimed. "What a way to drive!" I added, as the
coachman whipped up his horses and drove on some fifty yards, close to
the kerb. There he pulled up abruptly. The door of the brougham was
pushed open and a woman got out. Such a figure it was that outlined
itself in the sunny light, standing on the white trottoir, and with the
vista of the Champs Elysees behind it--a form seductive in every line,
with a fine hip, and a tiny arched foot that tapped the pavement
impatiently.
"What's up?" I said to Howard. "Whom is she waiting for, I wonder?"
A few steps more brought us up to her, and then, to our astonishment,
she turned fully towards me, and said in her own language,--
"Will you come and dine with me this evening, Monsieur? The carriage
will take us home now!"
We both stopped short. There was a second of blank amaze, and the
woman's face stamped itself on our startled vision;--the eyes, liquid
and gleaming, behind a veil of black lashes; the smooth firm nose, with
its raised and tremulous nostril; the oval of either cheek, with the
damask glow in it; and the curled mouth of deepest crimson, with the
essence of sensuous languor in its curve.
For a second we stared at it in the sunlight, and that second sufficed
to let us take in the situation; and there was something in her words
and tone of confidence, and something of authority in the way she
pointed to her carriage, that annoyed me.
"Thank you! I only dine with my friends," I answered coldly.
I suppose she was not insensible to the contempt in my tone and eyes as
I looked down on her, for her next words came in a more humble,
ingratiating voice.
"Make me one of them, then, Monsieur!--at once;" and she smiled--a
lovely smile on such a mouth. Howard stood in silence, staring at her.
I was very much amused and a little annoyed.
"You flatter me!" I returned, satirically; "but I have as many as I
want already."
Howard broke in.
"Won't you extend your invitation to me?" he said, eagerly, and she
threw a quick side-glance over him.
"I can't invite you both--at the same time!" she said, with a laugh and
a little Parisian shrug; and then she looked at me again with a look
that one would say was abominable or charming, according as one's
particular mood at the moment was.
My mood was not such as to condemn it.
My next words were simply said for me, as it were, by my long habit of
self-restraint.
"My presence is not in the question at all, to embarrass you," I said,
curtly, and added to Howard--
"We may as well go on."
But that was not at all his view.
"Ask me," he said, with his shaky French accent; "I'll come!" and he
put his hand on her arm, with a glance that matched her own. She seemed
pretty well indifferent which of us it should be, and she merely said
imperiously,--
"Come, then!" and with a grimace over her shoulder at me, disappeared
into her brougham again.
Howard would have followed instantly, but I seized his arm.
"What are you doing?" I said in English. "Is it worth it, Howard? You
may regret it. She is probably some married woman!"
Howard wrenched himself free from me.
"Don't talk to me! I'm not the fellow to refuse a jolly good lark when
it's offered to me!"
He flung himself into the brougham without another word, drew the door
to after him, and they were gone, whirling up the Champs Elysees,
leaving me standing on the kerb looking after the polished black back
of the brougham receding and growing small in the distance.
"Well!" I thought, "if another fellow had told me this tale, I should
have thought it a howler!"
The suddenness of the whole thing had taken my breath away, and I must
have stood there many seconds in confused thought, in which a flexible
form and arched foot took a prominent part.
When I roused myself I saw Nous was lying down beside me with the
patience of a philosopher, and catching the flies that buzzed along the
sunny pavement--to kill time.
I called him, and went on up toward the Arc.
"I couldn't have done otherwise," I thought. I knew I did not wish to
have done otherwise. I knew I should say again exactly the same if the
brougham were again before me, but yet--
"I want nothing now that I have my work on hand," I told myself, as the
arched foot went on before me up the pavement.
"By-and-by"--but then life seemed all by-and-bys for me.
I shortened my walk. Everything seemed to jar upon my nerves. I went
back to the hotel by a quiet way, and then up to the empty room to work.
Howard did not return for a couple of days. On the third I was sitting
after dinner at one of the tables outside the hotel cafe, smoking,
under the line of trees that edge the Paris kerb, when a fiacre drew up
at my very elbow, and Howard got out. He did not see me for a minute,
engaged with paying the cocher and hunting for a pourboire, and then he
was just going straight across the lighted trottoir into the hotel when
I called to him.
"Hullo, Vic! there you are!" he said, turning back. "I didn't see you
under the tree."
He came back and drew up a chair, with a scraping sound, to the
opposite side of my table, leant his elbows upon it, and pushed his hat
back. There was a blaze of light, all across the pavement to where we
were sitting, from the windows and open glass doors of the cafe. He
looked well and uncommonly jolly; a man who lives his life, such as it
is, without thought, without reflection, and without philosophy--who
views the passing hour without grudging, the past without regret.
"You look awfully seedy," he said. "Anything up?"
"No," I answered. "Well? 'How have we sped in this contest?' How went
the dinner?"
"I'll tell you," he said, turning round to secure a passing garcon.
"Let's get hold of a drink first. Oh, she's got a jolly place!" he
said, when the garcon, and eventually the drink, had been captured.
"Nice house and all that. She's married, as you said, and of very good
family. Received everywhere, you know."
"Husband at the dinner?" I asked laconically.
"No; husband gone to Tunis on business."
"Expected back to-day, I suppose?"
"No, to-morrow."
"Pity."
"Yes. You should have gone, Vic! She'd have satisfied you! Lovely
figure! I never knew a lovelier!"
I said nothing.
"What did you think of her stopping us like that?" he went on after a
minute.
"I thought it consummate cheek," I said. "I should not have believed it
if it hadn't actually happened before my eyes."
"Yes, it was cheeky; but do you know, she is not very cheeky, really.
An awfully nice woman, and very clever. But aren't these Parisiennes
queer? You can't imagine any woman doing such a thing in England, can
you?"
"Hardly."
"It seems she had seen us once before. It was you she wanted, not me.
Why didn't you go, you duffer? I only came in a bad second!"
I laughed.
"She had read my things and likes them. Do you know, I think it is
rather a good thing I have met her, it will urge me to do more--don't
look at me 'in that tone of voice,' I am sure it will, really, Victor!"
"Are you going to see her again, then?" I asked.
"Yes, oh yes!"
"When the husband next visits Tunis, I suppose?"
"Yes, and before that, even when he's here. She is going to patronise
my talent--see?"
"I see."
"I must write my next thing to her, of course. It's a nuisance being
hampered with this beastly French language!"
And then the conversation went on. We sat there and talked and argued
from the particular to the general, and back again, until the waiters
came and cleared the chairs off the pavement and began to turn out the
lights in the cafe--and it was a conversation after which I slept badly.
After this incident I saw less of Howard, and our lives ran farther and
farther apart. I grew more and more absorbed in the developing
manuscript. He grew more and more taken up in the stream of amusement
he had entered. He wrote very little. A couple of lines that had
occurred to him perhaps at the theatre, and were jotted hastily on the
edge of a programme, was all that a whole week produced. And even these
would have been lost through his carelessness but for me.
The days were generally divided between headache and sleep; the nights
between the theatre and drink. I regretted it; and this life that was
being wasted, poured out in uselessness, within my sight oppressed me.
I should hardly have noticed it with another man, but I knew that this
one had been planned for higher things.
I used to try and rouse in him his pride and love for himself, or, at
any rate, for his talent. I used to insist on his hearing me read
sometimes those disconnected lines that his own brain, dulled by drink,
had almost forgotten.
"Are they not splendid?" I would say; "and you are the author! You are
their parent, Howard! Think! Any man could lead the life you are
leading! not one in a thousand could produce these lines!"
Howard would look at me suspiciously with heavy eyes.
"Are you sure I wrote that? I don't think I remember it!"
What a crime!
"I know you did," I would answer, and then urge him to give every day
and night in the week, if he liked, to pleasure except one--"let one be
sacred to work!"
"And just think," he would answer, lazily, "if I were dying, how those
days and nights wasted would come and stare me in the face!"
"Wasted! in the building of such lines as these?"
"But what's the good of them when they are built? They don't make me
enjoy life!"
And he pursued his own path and I could not stop him. I hoped and
thought he would get tired after a time of the Paris halls and drunken
nights and sick headaches, but I waited in vain. He had gradually got
intimate with the back as well as the front of the scenes, and this I
liked less than anything. The state of Howard's finances, too, threw an
extra weight of responsibility on me, for he must have trodden a
straighter road, and perhaps he would have worked more if he had had
less money. And the money--his superfluous cash--came generally from
me. His own allowance was small; just enough to keep him and no more.
Gifts, under the name of loans, from me supplied all extras, and filled
all deficiencies and gaps. What could I answer when he used to say,
"Dear old boy! let me have another twenty!" And yet I knew it was
handing him the razor to cut his throat. I hoped the sight of another
fellow working as persistently as I did would have been an
encouragement to him to make some sort of effort himself, but he looked
upon me as a misguided creature, and took pains not to follow my
example.
"How do you know that you will ever marry Lucia? or make a success of
your books or anything?" he asked me one evening as we went upstairs
after dinner, he to dress before going to La Scarletta, I to work on
the MS.
"You are working for an uncertainty, a dream. It may never come off,
and then where will you be. Now, at least, I know what I am going to
have this evening. Such enjoyment as there is I get it, and there's an
end of it, and no worry about it. As for you, you are all worry; and
even granted that you get, in the end, something superlatively
satisfactory, why, it will hardly make up to you for all you have gone
through to get it!"
I said nothing. We had got up to our rooms by this time, and I flung
myself into the easy chair.
Howard went into his room and brought back his dress shoes to put them
on in mine, that he might follow up his argument.
"Now, look here, Vic, which of us two fellows is the most ready to go
out of the world? In the Bible or prayer-book or somewhere we are told
to live so that we may be willing and prepared to die any minute. Well,
that's just what I do. I haven't a scrap of a tie to life. I don't
think there will be anything better in it than what I have had already.
I'd go to-morrow. But you, you would not like it a bit, and you can't
deny it. You have got all the ties of your unsatisfied desires. You
want to get Lucia--you want to make your name. You would be awfully cut
up now if you were told you were going to be bundled out of life in ten
minutes; and I--I shouldn't care!"
Howard had finished fastening his patent shoes, and now sat back in his
chair, one leg crossed over the other, and his hands behind his head.
"Being brought into life is just like being invited to a feast from
which you may be called away at any minute. Well, if you have eaten and
drunk to satiety you will be only too glad to get up and go away and
sleep. But if you have sat at the table, hungering all the time and
repressing yourself, then, when the sudden call comes, and you must
rise and leave it for ever, think what a misery and bitterness to be
dragged away from the brilliant table, with all its dishes and its
wines untasted, its flowers unsmelt, and be crammed away into the
darkness--hungry, thirsty, and unsatisfied. Take my word for it, Vic,
you'll have a bad five minutes on your deathbed!"
I listened in silence. I felt ill and dispirited and disinclined for
talk.
"That's all Horace. I don't care much about Latin as a whole, but I do
think he is splendid. I'd have that book made the general testament.
I'd have it taught in all the Board Schools and sworn on in the Law
Courts. I'd have every fellow take it as a guide through life; if he
really acts up to it, it ensures his happiness. Its philosophy beats
all the religions hollow. 'Take the day.' 'Put no trust in to-morrow.'
'Seek not to know the future; whatever it is, bear it.' 'Each night be
able to say I have lived.' 'Retire from life, satisfied, as from a
banquet.' And so on ad lib. You know it all, Victor. You were brought
up upon it, but you haven't profited by it--not a scrap. Well, I'm
going!"
He leant forward, picked up his shoes, and went into his own room. It
was about twelve when he came in that night and found me just finishing
off a chapter. The fire had gone out from neglect; the window stood
open and the lace curtains waved in the damp night wind. Howard stalked
across the room and banged the glass doors shut, and told me it was
beastly cold in here. I was just fully absorbed in the closing passages
of my scene, and felt a nervous irritation at being interrupted.
"There's a fire-lighter behind the scuttle, throw it into the grate and
you'll soon have a blaze," I said, without looking up.
Howard drew off his lavender gloves and flung them down on the table.
One fell on the last sheet I had written.
"Confound you! do be careful!" I muttered, picking it up, and noticing
the great blur it left on the page. "The sheets are wet."
"It doesn't matter, they're not a new pair!" answered Howard, coolly,
going down on his knees to light up the fire. He accomplished this in a
few minutes, and then settled down in the long chair with a cigar. I
wrote on feverishly, expecting to be addressed and interrupted every
moment. It was a great bore his coming in just now, disturbing me. I
had a difficult thing to express, and I was just pursuing the tail end
of an idea I could not quite grasp. My pen hovered uncertainly over the
paper. I could not exactly give words to the impression in my brain,
and the sense that he was going to speak, about to speak each second,
worried me. At the same time I never wished to be ungracious to Howard
when he did return to our rooms; never wished to feel it was my
execrably bad company that induced him to stay away from them all night
instead of half.
"I say, Vic!"
"Well?"
"Do you know that kissing song Embrasse moi?"
I nodded.
"Don't you think it awfully fetching? I like that refrain so
much--Embrasse moi, chumph! chumph!--and then the orchestra exactly
imitates the sound of a kiss--then Encore une fois!! chumph! chumph!
Don't you?"
"Yes; it isn't bad."
Silence.
"Victor!"
"What?"
"La Faina was there to-night!"
"Oh!"
"Do you know her?"
"I've heard of her."
Silence.
"Vic!"
"Yes?"
"Do you know what Faina means?"
"Of course I do!"
"Do you think it a nice name?"
"Not particularly."
"Well, it's better than Grille d'Egout anyway, isn't it?"
"About on a par, I should say." "How many frills do you think she had
on her petticoat?"
"Oh, I don't know--forty!"
"No; four. I counted them. Her figure is not much up atop, but her"--
"Oh, stow all that!" I interrupted; "there's a good fellow, I'm just
doing a convent interior."
"All right. The rest is silence. Ah!" with a yawn, and getting up to
saunter round the room, "that's a jolly good song--Embrace moi! chumph!
chumph! Encore une fois!! chumph! chumph!"
He did not address me again, but somehow my ideas were scattered. The
convent scene went wrong. Ballet dancers seemed standing in the aisle
where nuns should have been kneeling, and, after a second or so, I
flung my pen down and pushed away the paper.
"Done?" exclaimed Howard, delightedly.
"Yes," I said simply, rising.
"Come and have a smoke," he said, drawing up both easy chairs to the
fire.
I took the cigar he offered and sat down. Howard threw himself into the
other chair, crossed his legs, and proceeded to give me an account of
his experiences. I suppose I was rather silent, for after a time he
broke in upon himself by saying abruptly,--
"Are you very savage with me for interrupting your work?"
"Savage?" I repeated. "Oh, no! the work can wait, I get plenty of time
at it!" Perhaps he misunderstood me, and my words conveyed to him more
than I meant. Any way, the next afternoon he came home early to dine
with me, and afterwards, when I was speaking of the evening's work, he
came up to me where I stood at the mantelpiece and took something out
of his pocket with a confident air.
"I've brought you something," he said, and he thrust suddenly into my
hand--under my eyes--a photograph.
My glance fell full on it, and I saw distinctly what it was--a
full-length figure of the danseuse Faina. Traditionally, perhaps, I
ought to have flung it into the fire--any way the grate--or torn it up.
But I am not fond of throwing other, people's things into the fire, nor
of tearing them up, simply because they offend my own views. He had no
right, perhaps, to thrust it upon me as he had, but that fact would
not, in my opinion, constitute my right to destroy it. So I merely laid
it on the mantelpiece.
"Extraordinary thing! Where did you pick that up?"
"Faina sent it to you with her love, and an invitation to supper
to-night after the last 'turn,'" replied Howard, rolling a cigarette,
sticking it with his lips, and looking at me over it.
"Oh! really?" I said, drily.
"Why, Victor, you've quite coloured up!" said Howard with a sort of
derisive triumph.
I felt I had. Why? I can hardly say. The word "love," the sudden view
of the portrait, dashed, whirling headlong over each other, through my
brain, followed by a sort of hazy cloud, out of which looked two azure
eyes.
"She is very lovely, isn't she?" Howard remarked affectionately,
setting the card upright against the wall.
"Very--in her own way," I assented.
I admitted it willingly, with pleasure. Why not?--an evident fact. The
blue slime in a blocked gutter of the road is very lovely also.
"Well, I'm going there to-night, because I admire the sister, and you
must come, too. You are killing yourself by sticking to the work in the
way you do. Come along! Where's the harm? Lucia will never know. I
won't split. God's in heaven and the Czar's a long way off! So you may
as well come and knock about a little. This monotonous life will put an
end to you!"
I was silent.
"Lucia won't know," he repeated.
"There's no question of Lucia's knowing anything," I said.
"Then why do you work as you do, and always refuse to come to a supper,
or a dance, or anything? You can't be really a quiet fellow or you
wouldn't write things the English won't have. You say it's not a
question of Lucia--then what the dickens is it that makes you live the
life you do?"
I did not answer him. I leant in silence against the mantelpiece,
staring absently at the portrait of Faina, and Howard got tired of
waiting for my answer. He went to dress, and I sat down at the
writing-table, absently sketching women's heads on my blotting paper.
Should I go with him or not? I felt tired of writing, tired of work.
Wine, laughter, sound, smiles, other voices?--Then four points rose
before me, very distinct and clear, like sharp mountain peaks from a
valley of mist.
FIRST. Supposing--if such a thing were possible--supposing on coming
out of this house I came face to face with Lucia, should I be entirely
pleased.
NEXT. Should I, when the present inclination were over, have a
satisfactory memory of this supper.
NEXT. Did I habitually mean to spend my evenings in this way?
LAST. Was it worth while spoiling a record for the sake of a single
deviation?
I answered No to each of these as they came before me in order, with
the upshot that I determined not to go. When Howard came in again I
looked up. He was dressed to the Enth, and as I glanced at his
good-looking, intelligent face, I thought how incongruous it seemed for
him to degrade himself with drink at this supper, and return, as he
probably would, a pitiable object to look at and listen to.
"Going to work, eh?"
I nodded. Howard hitched the cape of his overcoat straight, and went
out. As he shut the door I sprang suddenly to my feet. For a moment the
impulse towards distraction, amusement, relief from strain, physical
movement, overcame me. All the strong, ardent life rushed up within me.
A tremendous prompting came to shout after him, "Wait a minute, Howard!
I'll come, too, after all!" I was half way to the door. Then I laughed
and turned back. I went up to the mantelpiece and unlocked the doors of
a portrait frame that stood there, and flung them open. It was the
frame of Lucia's portrait, which, like the temple of Janus, stood
closed in times of peace and open in times of war. Now was war, and I
gazed at the picture within for encouragement. There was equal sinuous,
supple beauty in this form as in that outline on the Paris card, that
lay, perhaps, in the pocket of every flaneur on the boulevards. I
looked at the smooth, perfect shoulders, and those soft arms that had
never yet been drawn round a lover's neck; at the extreme pride and
dignity that lay in every line of the form that had never been touched
by a rough hand. It swept from me in one gust the thoughts and
tendencies struggling to rise. It brought back all the old revolt from
the lowest, all the old admiration for the highest, in human nature.
"Yes, you are worth it," I muttered, looking hard at the chaste,
exquisite pride in face and form; "you are worth being worthy of, and I
will not for an evening, nor for an hour, make myself a brute that you
would despise if you knew his nature. Whether you ever know or not,
what does that matter? I must know. Shall I come back to feel your
inferior? No! Not a day, nor a night, shall there be, the history of
which you might not read." All my own pride was stirred as I looked at
the portrait of this woman, who, I knew, was absolutely pure, and I
would not now have followed Howard had my life depended on it.
I gave the photograph of Faina, which still stood up against the wall,
a flick that sent it horizontal on the marble, and then, with Lucia's
eyes just above me, I sat down to write.
Seven o'clock came, and the bright light pouring into the room over the
table covered with loose sheets of paper found me writing still. I
looked up, then back on the page, decided I need not add another word,
flung down my pen, leaned back in my chair, and proceeded to light up a
cigar. "Good!" I thought with lazy satisfaction, as my eyes wandered
over the completely covered table and the drying sheets upon the floor.
"It was a splendid inspiration that! Had I gone out last night,
infallibly I should have missed it." Just then I heard a blundering,
uncertain step upon the stair, and then a dig in the centre of the door
panel.
I smiled.
"How long will it take him to find the lock, I wonder?" I thought.
The period was protracted. Round and round the keyhole did a shaky,
unsteady hand guide the wandering key. It scratched above, it dug at
the door beneath, while the low indistinct murmur of one repeated word
reached me within. At last, in sheer pity, I got up and opened the door
from the inside. Howard came unsteadily over the threshold, and half
blundered against me. His face was deadly pale; a bright greenish shade
lay close about his bloodshot eyes; his grey lips shook. With
difficulty he staggered to the chair opposite me and sat down. I shut
the door and resumed my seat and cigar.
"Enjoy yourself?" I asked.
He was not very steady on his feet, but fairly clear in his brain.
"Yes. But it's no good--can't stand it," he murmured, pressing his hand
hard upon his head and across his eyes.
His voice was little more than a gasp.
"God!--this weakness"--
We sat without speaking. In the bright light, in a glass opposite, I
caught sight of my own face. I was as pale as he from work, as he from
pleasure. My eyes were as bloodshot as his from sleeplessness, as his
from drink. My hand shook as much as his from mental excitement, as his
from physical exhaustion. He was the representative of those who
sacrifice to-morrow for to-day. I, of those who sacrifice to-day for
to-morrow. And I wondered, as I smoked on with his collapsed figure
before me, which was the greater fool. "Do neither" is the cry. "Take
the gifts of to-day without robbing to-morrow." Estimable rule, I
agree, if you are fortunate enough to have the chance of carrying it
out. But very few of us have. A man with Howard's constitution could
only purchase the hours last night with the hours of this morning.
Success would not come to me to-morrow unless I were willing to
struggle for it to-day.
"What did you drink?" I asked, after a pause.
"Maraschino, cognac, and clic," he answered, and a gesture of his hand
and first finger showed he meant in the same glass. I laughed.
"What a mixture! No wonder you're mixed yourself!"
"Can't stand it!" he only muttered again.
"No, you must sit it out or sleep it off now," I said, getting up with
a stretch. "Faina in good form?"
"Magnificent--Vic, you should have been there!"
"Thanks! yes, I think so!" I said, gathering up the precious pages from
the floor and table and piling them on a console. I wanted to go and
get my own breakfast, but the look of Howard's face, as it lay against
the chair back, bloodless, and the colour of ashes, made me hesitate to
leave him.
"Can I get you anything?" I said.
"No--help me into bed," he muttered, without opening his eyes, moving
his head restlessly from side to side.
"Come along, then," I answered, bending over him; "here's my arm."
He half raised his lids at that, and then feebly pushed a leaden hand
and arm through mine. There was a pause. He seemed unable to make a
farther movement, and sat, his head sunk into his chest, his arm
hanging through mine.
"Come, Howard, make an effort," I said, after a minute, and he
staggered uncertainly to his feet.
Getting him into the next room and into bed was a lengthy and difficult
matter, but at last, after protracted pauses, it was effected, and he
fell back upon the pillows--face and lips one tint with the linen. I
spoke to him, but I got no articulate answer, only groans in response.
"I am going to fetch you some coffee," I said, leaning over him.
His eyes opened wide, and fixed upon me with a sort of helpless terror.
"No, no! don't go!--stay!" he whispered, clutching my wrist with his
damp, shaking fingers. "Stay--a minute."
"But you want something to pull you round. I shan't be two seconds," I
answered, trying to unclasp his clinging fingers.
"Never mind! Oh, Vic, for God's sake stay."
There was an abject appeal in the bloodshot eyes, a desperate tenacity
in his clutch. He looked at me as if he dared look nowhere else. Some
horror seemed pressing upon his confused and weakened brain, and I
thought I could soothe him best by staying.
"Very well--there, I'm not going," I said, reassuringly.
Still he did not relax his grip upon me, but his eyes closed again, and
he seemed satisfied. I sat down on a chair at the bedside and waited.
The sun poured brighter and brighter through the blinds and touched up
the mantelpiece.
The photograph of Faina's sister, surrounded by some others of her set,
was propped up in the centre of it, on a couple of paper volumes. My
own head was aching violently now, and after a time the woman's figure
on the glossy, sun-flecked surface of the card began to sway and swim
before my eyes as I looked lazily at it.
The minutes passed by and Howard did not move. At last, I ventured to
try and withdraw my stiffening arm without rousing him, but at the
first movement his fingers tightened and his groans recommenced.
After a time my hunger passed into drowsiness. I leant forward
gradually, and at last my head sank down on the edge of his bed, and I
drifted into oblivion.