“It is fortunate,” said Severn, sitting up and stretching, “that we
have tided over the dinner hour, for I have nothing to offer you for
supper but what may be purchased with one silver franc.”
The cat on his knee rose, arched her back, yawned, and looked up at him.
“What shall it be? A roast chicken with salad? No? Possibly you prefer
beef? Of course,—and I shall try an egg and some white bread. Now for
the wines. Milk for you? Good. I shall take a little water, fresh from
the wood,” with a motion toward the bucket in the sink.
He put on his hat and left the room. The cat followed to the door, and
after he had closed it behind him, she settled down, smelling at the
cracks, and cocking one ear at every creak from the crazy old building.
The door below opened and shut. The cat looked serious, for a moment
doubtful, and her ears flattened in nervous expectation. Presently she
rose with a jerk of her tail and started on a noiseless tour of the
studio. She sneezed at a pot of turpentine, hastily retreating to the
table, which she presently mounted, and having satisfied her curiosity
concerning a roll of red modelling wax, returned to the door and sat
down with her eyes on the crack over the threshold. Then she lifted her
voice in a thin plaint.
When Severn returned he looked grave, but the cat, joyous and
demonstrative, marched around him, rubbing her gaunt body against his
legs, driving her head enthusiastically into his hand, and purring
until her voice mounted to a squeal.
He placed a bit of meat, wrapped in brown paper, upon the table, and
with a penknife cut it into shreds. The milk he took from a bottle
which had served for medicine, and poured it into the saucer on the
hearth.
The cat crouched before it, purring and lapping at the same time.
He cooked his egg and ate it with a slice of bread, watching her busy
with the shredded meat, and when he had finished, and had filled and
emptied a cup of water from the bucket in the sink, he sat down, taking
her into his lap, where she at once curled up and began her toilet.
He began to speak again, touching her caressingly at times by way of
emphasis.
“Cat, I have found out where your mistress lives. It is not very far
away;—it is here, under this same leaky roof, but in the north wing
which I had supposed was uninhabited. My janitor tells me this. By
chance, he is almost sober this evening. The butcher on the rue de
Seine, where I bought your meat, knows you, and old Cabane the baker
identified you with needless sarcasm. They tell me hard tales of your
mistress which I shall not believe. They say she is idle and vain and
pleasure-loving; they say she is harebrained and reckless. The little
sculptor on the ground floor, who was buying rolls from old Cabane,
spoke to me to-night for the first time, although we have always bowed
to each other. He said she was very good and very beautiful. He has
only seen her once, and does not know her name. I thanked him;—I don’t
know why I thanked him so warmly. Cabane said, ‘Into this cursed Street
of the Four Winds, the four winds blow all things evil.’ The sculptor
looked confused, but when he went out with his rolls, he said to me, ‘I
am sure, Monsieur, that she is as good as she is beautiful.’”
The cat had finished her toilet, and now, springing softly to the
floor, went to the door and sniffed. He knelt beside her, and
unclasping the garter held it for a moment in his hands. After a while
he said: “There is a name engraved upon the silver clasp beneath the
buckle. It is a pretty name, Sylvia Elven. Sylvia is a woman’s name,
Elven is the name of a town. In Paris, in this quarter, above all,
in this Street of the Four Winds, names are worn and put away as the
fashions change with the seasons. I know the little town of Elven, for
there I met Fate face to face and Fate was unkind. But do you know that
in Elven Fate had another name, and that name was Sylvia?”
He replaced the garter and stood up looking down at the cat crouched
before the closed door.
“The name of Elven has a charm for me. It tells me of meadows and clear
rivers. The name of Sylvia troubles me like perfume from dead flowers.”
The cat mewed.
“Yes, yes,” he said soothingly, “I will take you back. Your Sylvia is
not my Sylvia; the world is wide and Elven is not unknown. Yet in the
darkness and filth of poorer Paris, in the sad shadows of this ancient
house, these names are very pleasant to me.”
He lifted her in his arms and strode through the silent corridors to
the stairs. Down five flights and into the moonlit court, past the
little sculptor’s den, and then again in at the gate of the north wing
and up the worm-eaten stairs he passed, until he came to a closed door.
When he had stood knocking for a long time, something moved behind the
door; it opened and he went in. The room was dark. As he crossed the
threshold, the cat sprang from his arms into the shadows. He listened
but heard nothing. The silence was oppressive and he struck a match.
At his elbow stood a table and on the table a candle in a gilded
candlestick. This he lighted, then looked around. The chamber was vast,
the hangings heavy with embroidery. Over the fireplace towered a carved
mantel, grey with the ashes of dead fires. In a recess by the deep-set
windows stood a bed, from which the bedclothes, soft and fine as lace,
trailed to the polished floor. He lifted the candle above his head. A
handkerchief lay at his feet. It was faintly perfumed. He turned toward
the windows. In front of them was a _canapé_ and over it were flung,
pell-mell, a gown of silk, a heap of lace-like garments, white and
delicate as spiders’ meshes, long, crumpled gloves, and, on the floor
beneath, the stockings, the little pointed shoes, and one garter of
rosy silk, quaintly flowered and fitted with a silver clasp. Wondering,
he stepped forward and drew the heavy curtains from the bed. For a
moment the candle flared in his hand; then his eyes met two other eyes,
wide open, smiling, and the candle-flame flashed over hair heavy as
gold.
She was pale, but not as white as he; her eyes were untroubled as a
child’s; but he stared, trembling from head to foot, while the candle
flickered in his hand.
At last he whispered: “Sylvia, it is I.”
Again he said, “It is I.”
Then, knowing that she was dead, he kissed her on the mouth. And
through the long watches of the night the cat purred on his knee,
tightening and relaxing her padded claws, until the sky paled above the
Street of the Four Winds.