THE PRETENDER
In deference to the opinion of the publishers the Author has consented
to certain alterations being made in his work.
THE PRETENDER
A Story of the Latin Quarter
BY
ROBERT W. SERVICE
AUTHOR OF “SONGS OF A SOURDOUGH,” “TRAIL
OF ’98,” ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1914
COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1914
BY ROBERT W. SERVICE
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
THE PRETENDER
“Of Books and Scribes there are no end:
This Plague--and who can doubt it?
Dismays me so, I’ve sadly penned
_Another_ book about it.”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
BOOK I--THE CHALLENGE
I THE HAPPIEST YOUNG MAN IN MANHATTAN 1
II THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS 10
III GRILLED KIDNEY AND BACON 20
IV AN UNINTENTIONAL PHILANDERER 28
V A SEASICK SENTIMENTALIST 40
VI AN INVOLUNTARY FIANCÉ 48
VII A BATTLE OF INK 61
VIII THE GIRL WHO LOOKED INTERESTING 69
IX THE CHEWING GUM OF DESTINY 78
X THE YOUNG MAN WHO MAKES GOOD 89
BOOK II--THE STRUGGLE
I THE NEWLY-WEDS 101
II THAT MUDDLE-HEADED SANTA CLAUS 114
III THE CITY OF LIGHT 123
IV THE CITY OF LAUGHTER 133
V THE CITY OF LOVE 145
VI GETTING DOWN TO CASES 156
VII THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY 166
VIII “TOM, DICK AND HARRY” 181
IX AN UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT 193
X THE LIFE AND DEATH OF DOROTHY MADDEN 204
BOOK III--THE AWAKENING
I THE STRESS OF THE STRUGGLE 215
II THE DARKEST HOUR 231
III THE DAWN 241
IV A CHAPTER THAT BEGINS WELL AND ENDS BADLY 258
V THE GREAT QUIETUS 271
VI THE SHADOW OF SUCCESS 286
VII THE FATE OF FAME 298
VIII THE MANUFACTURE OF A VILLAIN 308
IX A CHEQUE AND A CHECK 317
X PRINCE OF DREAMERS 333
BOOK I--THE CHALLENGE
CHAPTER I
THE HAPPIEST YOUNG MAN IN MANHATTAN
To have omnibus tastes and an automobile income--how ironic?
With this reflexion I let myself collapse into a padded chair of
transcendent comfort, lit a cigarette and inspected once more the
amazing bank-book. Since I had seen it last several credit entries had
been made--over twenty thousand dollars; and in the meantime, dawdling
and dreaming in the woods of Maine, all I had managed to squander was a
paltry thousand. Being a man of imagination I sought for a simile. As
I sat there by the favourite window of my favourite club I could see
great snowflakes falling in the quiet square, and at that moment it
seemed to me that I too was standing under a snowfall, a snowfall of
dollars steadily banking me about.
For a moment I revelled in the charming vision, then like a flash it
changed. Now I could see two figures locked in Homeric combat. Like a
serene over-soul I watched them, I, philosopher, life-critic; for was
not one of them James H. Madden, a man of affairs, the other, J. Horace
Madden, dilettante and dreamer.... Look! from that clutter of stale
snow a form springs triumphant. Hurrah! It is the near-poet, the man on
the side of the angels.-- And so rejoiced was I at this issue that I
regarded the little bank-book almost resentfully.
“Figures, figures,” I sighed, “what do you mean to me? Crabbed symbols
on a smudgy page! can you buy for me that fresh Spring-morning feeling
in the brain, that rapture of a fine thing finely done? Ah no! the
luxury you spell means care and worry. In comfort is contentment. And
am I not content? Nay! in all Manhattan is there man more happy? Young,
famous, free--could life possibly be more charming? And so in my tower
of tranquillity let me work and dream; and every now and then, little
book, your totals will grow absurd, and I will look at you and say:
‘Figures, figures, what do you mean to me?’
“But, after all,” I went on to reflect, “Money is not so utterly
a nuisance. Pleasant indeed to think that when most are pondering
over the problem of the permanent meal-ticket, you are yourself well
settled on the sunny side of Easy Street. Poets have piped of Arcady,
have chorused of Bohemia, have expressed their enthusiasm for Elysian
fields, but who has come to chant the praise of Easy Street? Yet surely
it is the kindliest of all? Behind its smiling windows are no maddening
constraints, no irking servitudes, no tyranny of time. Just sunshine,
laughter, mockery of masters-- Oh, a thousand times blessed, golden,
glorious Easy Street!”
Here I lighted a fresh cigarette and settled more snugly in that chair
of kingly comfort.
“Behold in me,” I continued lazily, “a being specially favoured of the
gods. Born if not with a silver spoon in my mouth at least with one
of a genteel quality of nickel, blest with a boyhood notably cheering
and serene, granted while still in my teens success that others fight
for to the grave’s edge, untouched by a single sorrow, unthwarted by a
solitary defeat--does it not seem as if my path in life had been ever
preceded by an Olympian steam roller macadamising the way?
“True, as to appearance, the gods have failed to flatter me. If you,
gentle reader, who are as perfect as the Apollo Belvedere, gaze, at
your chiselled features in the silver side of your morning tea-pot,
you will get a good idea of mine. But there--I refer you to a copy of
_Wisdom for Women_, the well-known feminist Weekly. It contains an
illustrated interview, one of that celebrated series, _Lions in their
Dens_. Harken unto this:
“A tall, tight-lipped young man, eager, yet abstracted; eyes
quizzical, mouth a straight line, brow of a dreamer, chin of a
flirtatious stockbroker. His gleaming glasses suggest the journalist,
his prominent nose the tank-town tragedian. Add to that that he
has a complexion unæsthetically sanguine, and that his flaxen
hair, receding from his forehead, gives him a fictitious look of
intellectuality, and you have a combination easier to describe than
to imagine....”
“What a blessing it is we cannot see ourselves as others see us! How it
would fill life with intolerable veracities! Dear lady who wrote the
above, I can forgive you for the Roman nose, for the flirtatious chin,
nay, even for the fictitious intellectuality of my noble brow, but for
one thing I can never think of you with joy. You wrote of me that I was
‘a mould of fashion and a glass of form.’ Since then, alas! I have been
compelled to live up to your description. Bohemian to the backbone,
lover of the flannel suit of freedom and the silken shirt of ease, how
I have suffered in such clutch of _comme-il-faut_ no tongue can tell.
Yet thanks to a Fifth Avenue tailor even a little sartorial success has
fallen to my lot.”
Success! some men seem to have a magic power of attracting it, and I
think I must be one. Sitting there in the window of the club, as I
watched the shadows steal into the square, and the snow thicken to a
fluttering curtain I positively purred with satisfaction. Behind me
the silent library was lit only by a fire of glowing coals. The jocund
light gleamed on the carved oak of the book-cases, and each diamond
pane winked jovially. Yet cheerful though it was my thoughts were far
more rosy.
But now my reverie was being broken. Two men were approaching, and by
their voices I knew them to be Quince the critic and Vaine the poet.
The first was a representative of the School of Suds, the second an
exponent of the School of Sediment; but as neither were included in the
number of my more intimate enemies I did not turn to greet them.
Goring Quince is a stall-fed man with a purple face, cotton-coloured
hair and supercilious eyebrows. He is an incubator of epigrams. His
articles are riots of rhetoric, and it is marvellous how completely he
can drown a poor little idea in a vat of verbiage.
Herrick Vaine is a puffy, pimply person, with a mincing manner and
an emasculated voice. He might have been a poet of note but for two
things: while reading his work you always have a feeling that you have
seen something oddly like it before; and after you have read it all you
retain is a certain dark-brown taste on the mental palate. Otherwise he
is all right.
And now, having described the principals, let me record the little
dialogue to which I was the unseen listener.
VAINE (_with elaborate carelessness_): By the way, you haven’t read
my latest book, I suppose?
QUINCE (_cooingly_): Why yes, my boy. I lost no time in reading it. I
positively wallowed--I mean revelled in it. Reminds me of Baudelaire
in spots. Without you and a chosen few what would literature be?
VAINE (_enraptured_): How lovely of you to say so. You know I value
your opinion more than any in the world.
QUINCE (_waving his gold-rimmed eyeglasses_): Not at all. Merely
my duty as a watchdog of letters. Yes, I thought your _Songs
Saturnalian_ in a class by itself; but now I can say without being
accused of a lapse of literary judgment that your _Poems Plutonian_
marks a distinct epoch in modern poetry. There is an undefinable
_something_ in your work, a _je ne sais quoi_ ... you know.
VAINE: Yes; thank you, thank you.
QUINCE: Is it selling, by the way?
VAINE: Thank heaven, no! How banal! Popular success would imply
artistic failure. To the public true art must always be inaccessible.
If ever I find my work becoming bourgeois, it will be because I have
committed artistic suicide. On my bended knees I pray to be delivered
from popularity.
QUINCE: I see. You prefer the award of posterity to the reward
of prosperity. Well, no doubt time will bring you your meed of
recognition. In the meantime give me a copy of the poems, and I will
review it in next week’s _Compass_.
VAINE: Will you indeed. That honour alone will repay me for writing
it. By the way, I imagine I saw a copy in the library. Let me look.
(As Vaine had put it there himself his doubt seemed a little
superfluous. He switched on a light, and from the ranked preciosity
of a certain shelf he selected a slim, gilt volume.)
VAINE: _Poems Plutonian_.
QUINCE (_taking it in his fat, soft hands_): How utterly exquisite!
What charming generosity of margin!
VAINE: Yes; you know the great fault of books, to my mind, is that
they contain printed matter. Some day I dream of writing a book that
shall be nearly all margin, a book from which the crudely obvious
shall be eliminated, a book of exquisite intrusion, of supreme
suggestion, where magic words like rosaries of pearls shall glimmer
down the pages. I really think that books are the curse of literature.
If every writer were compelled to grave his works on brass and copper
from how much that is vain and vapid would we not be delivered?
QUINCE: Ah, yes! Still books have their advantages. Here, for example,
am I going to burn the incense of a cigar before the putrescent--I
mean the iridescent altar of art. Now if _Poems Plutonian_ were
inscribed on brass or stone I confess I should hesitate. What are
those things?
(He pointed to a separate shelf, on which stood nine volumes with
somewhat aggressive covers.)
VAINE: Well may you ask. Brazen strumpets who have stumbled into the
temple of Apollo. These, my dear sir, are the so-called novels of
Norman Dane. You see, as a member of the club, he is supposed to give
the library a copy of his books. We all hoped he wouldn’t, but he came
egregiously forward. Of course we couldn’t refuse the monstrous
things.
QUINCE: No, I understand. What’s this? _The Yellow Streak_: Two
hundred thousand! _The Dipsomaniac_: Sixth Edition!! _Rattlesnake
Ranch_: Tenth Impression!!! Why, what a disgusting lot of money the
man must be making!
VAINE: Yes, the Indiana Idol, the Boy Bestsellermonger. A perfect
bounder as regards Art. But he knows how to truckle to the mob. His
books sell by the ton. They’re so bad, they’re almost good.
QUINCE (_with surprising feeling_): There! I don’t agree with you. He
doesn’t even know how to please the public. It takes a clever man to
do that, and Norman Dane is only a dry-goods clerk spoiled. No, the
point is--he is the public, the apotheosis of the vulgar intelligence.
Don’t think for a moment he is writing down to the level of the mob.
He charms the great half-educated because he himself belongs to them.
He can’t help it.
VAINE: Yes, but there are so many plebeian novelists. How do you
account for Dane’s spectacular success?
QUINCE: A fool’s luck! He happened to hit the psychological moment.
When he leaped into the lists with _The Haunted Taxicab_ taxis had
just come out, and at the same moment there was a mania for mystery
stories. Take two popular _motifs_, mix recklessly, spice with
sentiment and sauce with sensation--there you have the _recipé_ of a
best-seller. His book fluked into favour. His publishers put their
weight behind it. In a month he found himself famous from Maine to
Mexico. But he couldn’t do it again; no, not in a thousand years. What
has he done since? Live on his name. Step cunningly in his tracks.
Bah! I tell you Norman Dane’s an upstart, a faker; to the very heart
of him a shallow, ignorant pretender....
Whatever else the poor chap might be was lost in the distance as the
two men moved away. For a long time after they had gone I did not stir.
The fluttering snow-butterflies seemed to have become great moths,
that hovered in the radiance of the nearest arc-light and dashed to a
watery doom. Pensively I gazed into that greenish glamour, pulling at a
burnt-out cigarette.
At last I rose, and going to the book-case regarded the nine volumes of
flamboyant isolation.
“An upstart,” I sighed softly; “a faker, a pretender....”
And to tell the truth I was sorely taken aback; for you see in my hours
of industry I am a maker of books and my pen name is Norman Dane.
CHAPTER II
THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS
Whether or not a sense of humour is an attribute of the Divine, I
am too ignorant of theology to conjecture; but I am sure that as
a sustaining power amid the tribulations of life it is one of the
blessedest of dispensations.
For a moment, I must confess, the words of Quince and Vaine stung me
to resentment. Being one of these people who think in moving pictures,
I had a gratifying vision in which I was clutching them savagely and
knocking their heads together. Then the whole thing struck me on the
funny side, and a little page boy, entering to turn on the lights, must
have been amazed to hear me burst into sudden laughter.
So that presently, as Mr. Quince, having spilt some cigar ash over the
still uncut leaves of _Poems Plutonian_, was arising to daintily dust
the volume, I approached him with a bright and happy smile.
“Hullo, Quince,” I began, cheerily.
He looked up. His eyes gleamed frosty interrogation, and his clipped
grey moustache seemed to bristle in his purple face.
“What is it?” he grunted.
“It’s about that matter we spoke of this morning. You know I’ve been
thinking it over, and I’ve decided to go on that note of yours.”
Quince was astonished. He was also overjoyed; but his manner was
elaborately off-hand.
“Ah! Thanks awfully, Madden. Only a matter of renewal, you know. Old
endorser went off to Europe, and the bank got after me. Well, you’ll go
on the note, then?”
“Yes, on one condition.”
“Hum! Condition! What?” he demanded anxiously.
“Well,” I said. “I believe one good turn deserves another. Now I was
down at the bank this morning, and I know you’re in rather a hole about
that renewal. Backers for thousand dollar notes aren’t picked up so
easily. However, I’m willing to go on it if you’ll”--here I paused
deliberately, “give my last book a good write up in your next _Compass
causerie_.”
His face fell. “I’m afraid--you see, I’ve promised Vaine--”
“Oh, hang Vaine! Sidetrack him.”
“But--there’s the policy of the paper--”
“Oh, well, I’ll buy a controlling interest, and alter your policy. But,
as a matter of fact, you know they’ll print anything over your name.”
“Yes--well, there are my own standards, the ideals I have fought for--”
“Rot! Look here, Quince, let’s be honest. We’re both in the writing
game for what we can get out of it. We may strut and brag; but we know
in our hearts there’s none of us of much account. Why, man, show me
half a dozen writers of to-day who’ll be remembered twenty years after
they’re dead?”
“I protest--”
“You know it’s true. We’re bagmen in a negligible day. Now, I don’t
want you to alter your standards; all I want of you is to adjust
them. You know that as soon as you see a book of mine coming along
you get your knife out. You’ve flayed me from the start. You do it on
principle. You’ve got regular formulas of abuse. My characters are
sticks, my plots chaotic, my incidents melodramatic. You judge my work
by your academic standards. Don’t do that. Don’t judge it as art--judge
it as entertainment. Does it entertain?”
“Possibly it does--the average, unthinking man.”
“Precisely. He’s my audience. My business is to amuse him, to take him
outside of himself for an hour or two.”
“It’s our duty to elevate his taste.”
“Fiddlesticks! my dear chap. I don’t take myself so seriously as that.
And, anyway, it’s hopeless. If you don’t give him the stuff he wants,
he won’t take any. You’ll never educate the masses to anything higher
than the satisfaction of their appetites. They want frenzied fiction,
plot, action. The men want a good yarn, the women sentiment, and we
writers want--the money.”
“It’s a sad state of affairs, I admit.”
“Well, then, admit that my books fill the bill. They’re good yarns,
they’re exciting, they’re healthy. Surely they don’t deserve wholesale
condemnation. So go home, my dear Quince, and begin a little screed
like this:
“In the past we have frequently found occasion to deal severely with
the novels of Norman Dane, and to regret that he refuses to use those
high gifts he undoubtedly possesses; but on opening his latest novel,
_The House of a Hundred Scandals_, we are agreeably surprised to note
a decided awakening of artistic conscience. And so on. No one knows
how to do it better than you. Bring to the bank to-morrow a proof of
the article, and I’ll put my name on the back of your note.”
“I--I don’t know. I’ll think it over. Perhaps I’ve been a little too
dogmatic. Let me see--Literary Criticism and the Point of View--yes,
I’ll see what I can do.”
As I left him ruefully brooding over the idea I felt suddenly ashamed
of myself.
“Poor old chap!” I thought; “I’ve certainly taken a mean advantage
of him. Perhaps, after all, he may be right and I wrong. I begin to
wonder: Have I earned success, or only achieved it? It seems to me this
literary camp is divided into two bands, the sheep and the goats, and,
sooner or later, a man must ask himself which he belongs to. Am I a
sheep or am I a goat?”
But I quickly steeled myself. Why should I have compunction? Was I not
in a land where money was the standard of success? Here then was the
virtue of my bloated bank-book--Power. Let them sneer at me, these
æsthetic apes, these flabby degenerates. There by the door was a group
of them, and I ventured to bet that they were all in debt to their
tailors. Yet they regarded me as an outsider, a barbarian. Looking
around for some object to soothe my ruffled feelings, I espied the
red, beefsteak-and-beer face of Porkinson, the broker. Here was a
philistine, an unabashed disciple of the money god. I hailed him.
Over our second whiskey I told Porkinson of the affair in the library.
He laughed a ruddy, rolling laugh.
“What do you care?” he roared raucously. “You put the stuff over and
grab the coin--that’s the game, isn’t it? Let those highbrow freaks
knock you all they want--you’ve got away with the goods. And, anyway,
they’ve got the wrong dope. Why, I guess I’m just as level-headed as
the next man, and I wouldn’t give a cent for the piffle they turn out.
When I’m running to catch a train I grab one of your books every time.
I know if there’s none of the boys on board to have a card game with
I’ve got something to keep me from being tired between drinks. What I
like about your yarns, old man, is that they keep me guessing all the
time, and the fellow never gets the girl till the last page. I always
skip a whole lot, I get so darned interested. I once read a book of
yours clean through between breakfast and lunch.”
Thanking Porkinson for his enthusiasm, which somehow failed to elate
me, I took the elevator up to my apartment on the tenth story of the
club. Travers, the artist, had a studio adjoining me, and, seeing a
light under his door, I knocked.
“Enter,” called Travers.
He was a little frail old man, with a peaked, grey face framed in a
plenitude of iron-grey hair, and ending in a white Vandyke beard. A
nervous trouble made him twitch his right eye continually, sometimes
emphasising his statements with curious effect. He believed he was one
of the greatest painters in the world; yet that very day three of his
best pictures had been refused by the Academy.
“I knew it,” he cried excitedly; “I knew when I sent them they’d come
back. It’s happened for the last ten years. They know if they hung me
I’d kill every one else in the room. They’re afraid of my mountains.”
(A wink.) “Their little souls can’t conceive of any scenery beyond
Connecticut. But it’s the last time I’ll send.” (A wink.) “I’ll get
recognition elsewhere, London, Paris; then when they want my pictures
for their walls they’ll have to come and beg, yes, beg for them.” (A
portentous wink.)
Every year he vowed the same thing; every year he canvassed the members
of the hanging committee; every year his pictures came cruelly back;
yet his faith in himself was invincible.
“I tell you what,” I said; “you might be one of the popular painters of
the day if you only looked at it right. Here you go painting straight
scenery as it was in the days before Adam. You object to the least hint
of humanity--a hut, a bridge, a boat. My dear sir, what the General
Public wants is the human, the dramatic. There’s that River Rapids
picture you did two years ago, and it’s still on your hands. Now that’s
good. That water’s alive, it boils; as I look at it I can hear it roar,
and feel the sting of the spray. But--it’s straight water, and the G.P.
won’t take its water straight. Now just paint two men in a birch-bark
canoe going down these rapids. Paint in a big rock, call it _A Close
Shave_, and you’ll sell that picture like winking.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that. You’re talking like a tradesman.”
“There’s that sunset,” I went on. “It’s splendid. That colour seems to
burn a hole in the canvas. But just you paint in a black cross against
that smouldering sky, and see how it gives significance, aye, and
poetry to the picture. Call it _The Lone Grave_.”
“But don’t you see,” said Travers, with some irritation, “I’m trying
to express a mood of Nature. Surely there’s enough poetry in Nature
without trying to drag in lone graves?”
“Not for the G.P. You’ve got to give it sentiment. Did that millionaire
brewer buy anything?”
Travers sighed rather wofully.
“No, he kept on asking me where my pictures were, and I kept on telling
him they weren’t anywhere, they were everywhere; they were in his own
heart if he only looked deep enough. They were just moods of nature.
He couldn’t see it. I believe he bought an eight by ten canvas at
Rosenheimer’s Department Store: _Moses Smiting the Rock_.”
“There you are. He was getting more for his money. He wanted action,
interest. Daresay he had the gush of water coloured to look like beer.
But I’ll tell you what I’ll do--I’ll give you five hundred for that
thing you call _Morning Mist in the Valley_.”
“Sorry,” said Travers, with a look of miserable hesitation; “I don’t
want to sell that. It’s the best thing I’ve done. I want to leave it to
the nation.”
“All right. You know best. Good-night.”
I knew I had offered more than the market value of the picture; I knew
that Travers had not sold a canvas for months; I knew that he often ate
only one meal a day, and that if he chose, he could paint commercial
pictures; so I could not but admire the little man who, in the face
of scorn, neglect, starvation even, clung to his ideals and refused
to prostitute his art. But this knowledge did not tend to restore my
self-esteem, and it was in a mood of singular self-criticism I entered
my room.
As I switched on the light the first thing I saw was my reflection
in a large mirror. Long and grimly I gazed, hands in pockets, legs
widespread, head drooping. I have often thought of that moment. It
seemed as if the reflection I saw was other than myself, was, indeed,
almost a stranger to me.
“Ha!” I cried, grimacing at the man in the mirror; “you’re getting
found out, are you? Tell me, now, beneath your wrappings of selfishness
and sham is there anything honest and essential? Is there a real _You_,
such as might stand naked in the wind-swept spaces of eternity? Or are
you, down to your very soul’s depths a player of parts?”
Then my mood changed, and I savagely paced the room.
“Oh, the fools! The hypocrites! Can’t they see that I am cleverer than
they? Can’t they see that I could write their futile sonnets, their
fatuous odes? But if I did, wouldn’t I starve? Am I to be blamed if I
refuse? It’s all right to starve if one’s doing immortal work; but not
six men in the world to-day are doing that. We’re ephemera. Our stuff
serves the moment. Then take the cash, and let the credit go.”
I took off my boots, and threw them viciously into a corner.
“How Quince upset me to-night! So I made a chance hit with my first
book? Well, it’s true the public were up on their toes for it. But then
I would have succeeded anyway. As to catering to the mass--I admit it.
I’m between the devil and the deep sea. The publishers keep rushing
me for the sort of thing that will sell, and the million Porkinsons
keep clamouring for the sort of thing they can read without having to
think. For the sake of his theoretical wife and six children, what can
a poor devil do but commercialise his ideals?”
Here I paused thoughtfully, with one arm out of my coat.
“After all, is a book of fiction not entertainment just as much as a
play? There’s your audience, the public. You’ve got to try and please
them, to be entertaining from cover to cover. Better be immoral than be
dull. And when it comes to audiences, give me a big one of just plain
‘folks,’ to a small one of highbrows.”
With knitted brows and lips pursed doubtfully, I proceeded to wind up
my watch.
“Anyway, I haven’t written for money; I’ve written for popularity. It’s
nice to think you can get on a train and find some one reading your
books--even if it’s only the nigger porter. True, my popularity has
meant about twenty-five thousand a year to me; but it’s not my fault
if my publishers insist on paying me such big royalties. And I’ve not
spent the money. I’ve gone on living on my private income. Then the
writing itself has been such a distraction. Lord! how I have enjoyed
it! Granted that my notion of Hades would be to be condemned to read
my own books, yet, such as they are, I’ve done my best with them. I’ve
lived them as I wrote. I’ve laughed with joy at their humour. I’ve shed
real tears (with just as much joy) at their pathos.”
I gave a wrench at my collar, expressive of savage perplexity; on which
the stud shot out, and cheerfully proceeded to roll under the wardrobe.
“Perhaps I’ve done things I shouldn’t? I’ve made coincidence work
overtime; I’ve grafted on love scenes so that the artist could get in
one or two ‘clinch pictures.’ On my last page you’ll find the heroine
clutched to the hero’s waistcoat; but--they all do it. One’s got to, or
get out of the game.”
Here I disappeared for a moment; and when I re-entered, clad in
pale-blue pyjamas, I was calm and cheerful again.
“So old Quince said I’d succeeded by a fluke. Well, I’d just like to
bet my year’s income against his that I could make a fresh start and
do the same thing all over again. By Jove! What an idea! Why not? Go
away to London, cut adrift from friends and funds, fight my way up the
ladder from the very bottom. After all, I’ve had the devil’s own luck,
everything in my favour. It’s hardly been a fair test. Perhaps I really
am a four-flusher. Even now I begin to doubt myself. It seems like a
challenge.”
Switching off the light I jumped into bed.
“Life’s too appallingly prosy. Here for seven years I’ve been
imagining romance; it’s time I tried to live it a little. Yes, I’ll
go to-morrow.... London ... garret ... poverty ... struggle ...
triumph....”
And at this point, any one caring to listen at my door might have heard
issuing from those soft blankets a sound resembling the intermittent
harshness of a buzz-saw going through cordwood.
CHAPTER III
GRILLED KIDNEY AND BACON
I was awakened at eight o’clock by the alarm in my watch, and lay a few
minutes debating whether or not I should rise. I have always rebelled
against the convention that makes us go to bed at night and get up
in the morning. How much less primitive to go to bed in the morning
and get up at night! But in either case we should abhor crude and
violent awakenings. We should awake rhythmically, on pulsing ripples
of consciousness. Personally, I should like to be awakened by gentle
music, viols and harps playing soft strains of half-forgotten melodies.
I should like to be roused by the breath of violets, to open my eyes to
a vista of still lake on which float swans whiter than ivory.
What I did open my eyes to was a vista of shivery sunshine, steely blue
sky, and snow on the roofs of the neighbouring sky-scrapers. I was
indeed comfortable. Outside the heat-zone of my body the sheets were
of a delectable coolness, and from head to heel I felt as if I were
dissolving in some exquisite oil of ease.
Lying there enjoying that ineffable tranquillity, I subjected myself to
my morning diagnosis. My soul is, I consider, a dark continent which it
is my life’s business to explore. This morning, then, in my capacity
of explorer, I started even as Crusoe must have done when he saw the
naked footprint in the sand. Extraordinary phenomenon! I had actually
awakened of the same mind as that in which I fell asleep.
Propping myself up I lit a cigarette.
“Well, young fellow,” I greeted my face in the mirror, “so we’re still
doubtful of ourself? Want to make fresh start, go to London and starve
in garret as per romantic formula? What foolishness! But let’s be
thankful for folly. Some day we’ll be wise, and life will seem so worn
and stale and grey. So here’s for London.”
With that I sprang up and disappeared into the bath-room from which you
might have heard a series of grunts and groans as of some one violently
dumb-belling; then a series of snorts and splutters as of some one
splashing in icy water; then the hissing noise one usually associates
with the rubbing down of horses. After all of which, in a pink glow and
a Turkish bath-robe, appeared a radiant young man.
Taking down the receiver of my telephone I listened for a moment.
“Yes, it’s me, Miss Devereux. Give me the dining-room, please....
Dining-room?... Yes, it’s Mr. Madden speaking. I want to order
breakfast.... No, not grape-fruit, I said _breakfast_--Grilled kidney
and bacon, toast and Ceylon tea. That’s all, thank you.”
In parenthesis I may say I do my best work on kidney and bacon. There
is, I find, a remarkable affinity between what I eat and what I write.
Before tackling a scene of blood I indulge in a slab of beefsteak,
extra rare; for tender sentiment I find there is nothing like a
previous debauch on angel cake and orange pekoe; while if I have to
kill any one I usually prime myself with coffee and caviare sandwiches.
But as far as ordinary narrative is concerned I find kidney and bacon
an excellent stimulus.
“How extremely agreeable this life is,” I reflected as I resumed
dressing. “No care, no responsibility, neither jolt nor jar in the
machinery. It’s almost too pleasant to be natural. Now, if I had a
house, servants, a wife, the trouble would just be beginning at this
time. As it is everything conspires to save me from friction. But it’ll
soon be all over. I never quite realised that. My last day of gilded
ease. To-day a young man of fashion in a New York club, to-morrow a
skulking tramp in the steerage of an ocean liner. Yes, I’ll go in the
steerage.”
Perhaps it was to heighten the contrast that I dressed with unusual
care. From a score of lounging suits I selected a soft one of slatey
grey; shirt, tie and socks to match; cuff-links of antique silver, and
a scarf-pin of a pearl clutched in a silver claw; a hat of grey velour,
and shoes with grey cloth uppers. Thus panoplied I sallied forth, a
very symphony in grey.
At this early hour the dining-room was empty, and three girls flew to
wait on me. For the first time it struck me as being odd. Surely, I
thought, if things were as they should be, woman would not be waiting
on man. Here am I, a strong, healthy brute of a male, lolling back like
a lord, while these frail females fly like slaves to fulfil my desires.
Yet I work three hours a day, they ten. I am rich, they painfully
poor. There’s something all wrong with the world; but we’re so used to
looking at wrong we’ve come to think it right.
A strange spirit of dissatisfaction was stirring in me, of desire to
see life from the other side. As I took my breakfast I studied the
girls, trying to imagine what they thought, how they lived. Although
there were no other members in the dining-room at that moment, each
waitress was obliged to remain at her post. How deadly monotonous,
standing there at attention! How tired they must be by the end of the
day! Then I noticed that one of them, under cover of her apron, was
taking surreptitious peeps at a yellow-covered book. At that moment
the lynx-eyed lady superintendent entered, caught her in the act, and
proceeded to rate her soundly. I hate scenes of any kind, and this
particularly pained me, for I saw that the all-too-tempting volume was
a cheap edition of _The Haunted Taxicab_.
Then that moving picture imagination of mine began to flicker. The girl
had gone from the room with tears in her eyes. Surely, thought I, she
has been dismissed. A blur came between me and my plate and the film
unreeled....
Ah! I see her trying to get other employment, failing again and again,
sinking deeper into the mire of misery and despair. Then at last the
time comes when the brave, proud heart is broken; the proud, sweet eyes
flinch at another day of bitterness and failure. They recognise, they
accent the end.
It is a freezing night of mid-winter, and I am walking down Broadway.
Suddenly I am accosted by a girl with a hard, painted face, a girl who
smiles the forced smile of fallen womanhood.
“Silvia!” I gasp.
She shrinks from me. “You!” she cries. “The author of my ruin; you,
whose book I was dismissed for reading, unable to resist peering into
the pages you had invested with such fatally fascinating charm....”
As the scene came up before me tears filled my eyes, and fearful that
they might drop on my kidney and bacon I averted my head. At the same
moment the waitress came back with a saucy giggle and resumed her post.
I was somewhat dashed, nevertheless I decided it would do for a short
story, and taking out my idea book I noted it down.
“Now,” I said, “let’s see the morning paper.... How lucky! The
_Garguantuan_ sails to-morrow. I’ll just catch her. Splendid!”
That histrionic temperament of mine began to thrill. Had not my whole
life been dominated by my dramatic conception of myself? Student,
actor, cowboy, I had played half a dozen parts, and into each I had put
my whole heart. Here, then, was a new one: let me realise it quickly.
So taken was I with the idea that I, who had never in my life known
what it was to want a hundred dollars, retired to the reading-room,
and, inspired by the kidney and bacon, took out a little gold pencil,
and with it dinted in my idea book the following sonnet:
TO LITERATURE
“I, a poor, passion-goaded garreteer,
A pensive enervate of book and pen,
Who, in the bannered triumph-march of men
Lag like a sorry starveling in the rear--
Shall I not curse thee, mistress mine? I peer
Up from life’s saturnalia, and then
Shrink back a-shudder to my garret den,
Seeing no prospect of a glass of beer.
“What have I suffered, Siren, for thy sake!
What scorn endured, what happiness foregone!
What weariness and woe! What cruel ache
Of failure ’mid a thousand vigils wan!
Yet do I shrine thee as each day I wake.
Wishing I had another shirt to pawn.”
I smoked two large cigars over my sonnet before I finally got it
straight. This in spite of the fact that I had a hundred and one other
things to do. If the house had been burning I believe the firemen
would have dragged me out muttering and puzzling over my sonnet. My
rhymes bucked on me; and, though I had rounded up a likely bunch of
words, I just couldn’t get them into the corral. Finally, with more of
perspiration than inspiration, the thing was done.
“Hullo, Madden!” said some one as I wrote the last line, and looking up
I saw young Hadsley, a breezy cotillion leader, who had recently been
admitted into his father’s law firm.
“Rotten nuisance, this early snow,” went on Hadsley. “Mucks things up
so. ’Fraid it’ll spoil the game on Saturday.”
“I hope not,” I replied fervently. The game was the Yale-Princeton
football match, and I was terribly eager to see my old college win.
“By the way,” suggested Hadsley, “if you care to go I’ll run you down
on my car.”
“Of course, I’d like it,” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “I’ll be simply
delighted.” Then like a flash I remembered.
“Oh, no! After all, I’m sorry, I can’t. I expect to be in mid-ocean by
Saturday.”
“Ah, indeed! That sounds interesting. Going to Europe! Wish I was. When
do you start?”
“To-morrow on the _Garguantuan_.”
“You don’t say! Why, the Chumley Graces are going on her. Of course,
you remember the three girls--awfully jolly, play golf divinely, used
to be called the Three Graces? They’re so peeved they’re missing the
game, but the old man won’t stay for it. They’re taking their car and
going to tour Europe. How nice for you! You’ll have no end of a good
time going over.”
Malediction! Could I never out-pace prosperity? Could I never throw off
the yoke of fortune?
“Oh, well, it’s not settled yet,” I went on quickly. “I may not be able
to make it for to-morrow. I may have to take a later boat. So don’t say
anything about it, there’s a good fellow.”
“Oh, all right. The surprise will be all the jollier when they see you.
Well, good-bye, old man, and good luck. You’ll get the news of the game
by wireless. Gee! I wish I was in your shoes.”
Hadsley was off, leaving me gnawing at an imaginary moustache. “The
Chumley Graces going on the _Garguantuan_. That means I can never go
steerage, and I have set my heart on going steerage. Let’s see the
paper again. Hurrah! There’s an Italian steamer sailing to-morrow
morning. Well, that’ll do.”
I was now in a whirlwind of energy, packing and making final
arrangements. At the steamship office, when I asked for a ticket, the
clerk beamed on me.
“Yes, sir, we can give you a nice suite on the main deck, the best we
have on the boat. Lucky it’s not taken.”
My moral courage almost failed me. “No, no!” I said hastily. “It’s not
for me. It’s for one of my servants whose way I’m paying back to Italy.
Give me a steerage ticket.”
“Coward! Coward!” hissed Conscience in my ear. “You’re making a bad
beginning.”
Just before lunch I remembered my business with Quince, and, jumping
into a taxi, whisked down to the Bank. The manager received me
effusively. The note was prepared--only wanted a satisfactory endorser.
I scratched my name on the back of it, then, speaking into the
telephone on the manager’s desk, I got Quince on the line.
“Hullo! This is Madden speaking. I say, Quince, I have fixed up that
note for you.”
(A confused murmur that might be construed as thanks.)
“And about that article, never mind. I find I won’t need it.”
(Another confused murmur that might be construed as relief.)
“No, I’ve come to the conclusion you’re right. The book’s not the right
stuff. If you praised it you’d probably have a hard time getting square
with your conscience. So we’ll let it go at that. Good-bye.”
Then I slammed the receiver on the hook, feeling that I had gained more
than I had lost.
By three o’clock everything had been done that could be done. I was on
the point of giving a sigh of relief, when all at once I remembered two
farewell calls I really ought to make.
“I’d almost forgotten them,” I said. “I must say good-bye to Mrs. Fitz
and Miss Tevandale.”
CHAPTER IV
AN UNINTENTIONAL PHILANDERER
To believe a woman who tells you her age is twenty-nine is to show a
naïve confidence in her veracity. Twenty-nine is an almost impossible
age. No woman is twenty-nine for more than one year, yet by a process
of elasticity it is often made to extend over half a dozen. True, the
following years are insolent, unworthy of acknowledgment, best punished
by being haughtily ignored. For to rest on twenty-nine as long as she
dare is every woman’s right.
Mrs. Fitzbarrington had been twenty-nine for four or five years, but
if she had said thirty-nine, no one would have expressed particular
surprise. However, there were reasons. Captain Fitzbarrington, who was
in receipt of a monthly allowance, had been engaged for some years in a
book entitled _The Beers of America_, the experimental investigations
for which absorbed the greater part of his income. Mrs. Fitz, then, had
a hard time of it, and it was wonderful how she managed to dress so
well and keep on smiling.
She received me in the rather faded drawing-room of the house in
Harlem. She herself was rather faded, with pale, sentimental eyes, and
a complex complexion. How pathetic is the woman of thirty, who, feeling
youth with all that it means slipping away from her, makes a last
frantic fight to retain it! Mrs. Fitz, on this occasion, was just a
little more faded, a little more restored, a little more thirty-ninish
than usual; and she welcomed me with a little more than her usual
warmth.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, giving me both hands. “You know, I
was just thinking of you.”
This clearly called for a gallant reply, so I answered, “Ah! that must
be telepathy, for you know I’m _always_ thinking of you.”
Yet I could have bitten my tongue as soon as I heard the last phrase
slip from my mouth. There was a sudden catch in her breath; a soft
light beaconed in her eyes. Confound the thing! why do the women we
don’t want to always take us seriously, and those we are serious with
always persist in regarding us as a joke? I hastened to change the
subject.
“Ah, how are the kiddies?”
The kiddies were Ronnie and Lonnie, two twin boys, very sticky and
strenuous, whom in my heart I detested.
“The darlings! They’re always so well. Heaven knows what I should do
without them.”
“And _he_?”
“Oh, he! I haven’t seen him for three days, not since the remittance
arrived, and then you can guess the state he was in.”
“My poor friend! I’m so sorry.” (How I hated my voice for vibrating
as I said this, but for the life of me I could not help it. At such a
moment tricks I had learnt in my short stage career came to me almost
unconsciously.)
“Oh, don’t pity me,” she said; “you know a woman hates any one who
pities her.”
“Then I mustn’t make you hate me.” (Again that infernal
fighting-with-repressed feeling note.) “Well, you know you have my
deepest sympathy,” I added hastily.
She certainly had. My Irish heart melts at a tale of woe, or is roused
to fiery wrath at the recital of a wrong. I feel far more keenly than
the person concerned. Yet, alas! the moment after I am ready to laugh
heartily with the next one.
“Yes, indeed, I know it,” she spoke quickly. “It almost makes it worth
while to suffer for that. You know how much it means to me, how much it
helps, don’t you?”
There was an awkward pause. She was waiting for me to take my cue, and
I was staring at a mental sign-board, “Dangerous Ground.” I tried to
say, “Well, I’m glad,” in a friendly way, but, to my infinite disgust,
my voice broke. She caught the note, as of suppressed emotion. With
wide eyes she looked at me as if she would read my soul: her flat bosom
heaved, then suddenly she leaned forward and her voice was tense.
“Horace,” she breathed, “do you love me?”
Now, when a female asks an unprotected male if he loves her there
can be only two answers: Yes or No. If No, a scene follows in which
he feels like a brute. If Yes, he saves her feelings and gives Time
a chance to straighten things out. The situation is embarrassing and
calls for delicate handling. I am sadly lacking in moral courage, and
kindness of heart has always been my weakness. To say “No” would be to
deal a deathblow to this woman’s hope, to leave her crushed and broken,
to drive her to despair, perhaps even to suicide. Besides--it would be
awfully impolite.
“Perhaps I’d better humour her,” I thought. So I too leaned forward,
and in the same husky voice I answered, “Stella, how can you ask?”
“Cora,” she corrected gently. I was rather taken aback. Yet I am not
the first man who has called the lady of the moment by the name of her
predecessor. It is one of life’s embarrassing situations. However, I
went on:
“Cora, how could you guess?”
“How does a woman know these things?” she answered passionately. “Could
I not read it in your eyes alone?”
“Ah! my eyes--yes, my eyes....” Inwardly I added, “Damn my eyes!” Then,
after a pause in which I was conscious of her wide, bright, expectant
regard I repeated lamely, “Ye--es, my eyes.”
But she was evidently waiting for me to rise to the occasion. She
leaned still further forward; then suddenly she laid her hands on mine.
“You mustn’t kiss me,” she said.
“Oh, no, I mustn’t,” I agreed hastily. I hadn’t the slightest intention
of doing it.
“No, no, that would ruin us. We must control ourselves. If Charley were
to discover our secret he would kill me. Oh, I’ve known for long, so
long that you loved me; but you were too fine, too honourable to show
it. Now, what are we going to do? The situation is full of danger.”
“Do!” I said glumly, “I don’t know. It’s beastly awkward.” Then with an
effort I cheered up. I tried to look at her with sad, stern eyes. I let
my voice go down an octave.
“There’s only one thing to do, Nora--I mean, Cora, only one thing:
I--must--go--away.”
“No, no, not that,” she cried.
“Yes, yes, I must; I must put the world between us. We must never meet
again.”
I could feel fresh courage in my heart, also the steerage ticket in my
pocket. In a near-by mirror I had a glimpse of my face, and was pleased
to see how it was stern and set. I was pleased to see also that she was
looking at me as if I were a hero.
“Brave! Noble!” she whispered. “I knew it. Oh, I understand so well!
It’s for me you’re doing this. How proud I am of you!”
Then, with my returning sense of safety, the dramatic instinct began to
seethe in me. Apparently I had got out of the difficulty easily enough.
Now to end things gracefully.
“Oh, what an irony life is!” I breathed. “How happy we could have been,
just we two in some garden of roses. Oh, if we were only free, free to
fly to the ends of the earth together, to the heart of the desert, to
the shadow of the pole--only together! Why did we meet like this, too
late, too late?”
“Is it too late?” she panted, catching fire at my words. “Why should
we let life cheat us of our joy? Take me away, darling, to some far,
far land where no one will know us, where we can live, love, dream.
What does it matter? There will be a ten days’ scandal; he will get a
divorce; all will soon be forgotten. Oh, take me away, sweetheart; take
me away!”
By this time I was quite under the spell of my histrionic imagination.
Here was a dramatic situation, and, though the heavens fall, I must
work it out artistically. I threw caution to the winds and my arms
around the lady.
“Yes,” I cried. “Come with me. Come now, let us fly together. I want
you; I need you; I cannot live without you. Make me the happiest man in
the world. Let me live for you, just to adore you, to make your life
one long, sweet dream of bliss.”
These were phrases from one of my novels, and they slipped out almost
unconsciously. Again in that convenient mirror I saw myself with parted
lips and eyes agleam. “How well I’m doing this!” the artist in me
applauded. “Ass! Ass!” hissed the critical overself. My attitude was a
picture of passionate supplication, yet my whole heart was a prayer to
the guardian that watches over fools.
“Oh, don’t tempt me,” she cried; “it’s terrible. Yes, yes, I’ll go now.
Let’s lose no time in case I weaken ... at once.... I’ll just get my
hat and cloak. Wait a moment--”
She was gone. Horror of horrors! What had I done? Here I was eloping
with a woman for whom I did not care two pins. What mad folly had
got into me? As I stared blankly at the door through which she had
passed it seemed to be suddenly invested with all the properties of
tragedy. Soon she would emerge from it clad for the flight, and--I
must accompany her. Could I not escape? The window? But no, it was
six stories high. By heaven, I must go through with it! Let my life
be ruined, I must play the game. As I sat there, waiting for her to
reappear, never in the history of eloping humanity was there man more
miserable.
Then at last she came-- Oh, merciful gods, without her hat!
“How can I tell you,” she moaned. “My courage failed me. I couldn’t
bear to leave my children. There were their little photographs staring
at me so reproachfully from the dressing-table. For their sakes I must
stay and bear with him. After all, he is their father.”
“Is he? I mean, of course he is.” How my brain was reeling with joy! At
that moment I loved the terrible twins with a great and lasting love.
“Forgive you, Flora,” I said nobly. “There is nothing to forgive. I
can only love you the more. You are right. Never must they think of
their mother with the blush of shame. No, for their dear sakes we must
each do our duty, though our hearts may break. I will go away, never
to return. Yet, my dearest, I will always think of you as the noblest
woman in the world.”
“And I you too, dearest. You shall be my hero, and I shall adore you to
the last day of my life. Now go, go quickly lest I weaken; and don’t”
(here she leaned closely to me), “don’t kiss me--not even once....”
“No, I won’t. It’s hard, hard--but I won’t. And listen, darling--if
ever anything should happen to _him_, if at any time we should both
find ourselves free, promise, promise me you’ll write to me. _I’ll
come to you though the whole world lies between us._ By my life, by my
honour I swear it.”
“I promise,” she said fervently. She looked as if she was going to
weaken again, and I thought I had better get away quickly. A phrase
from one of my novels came into my mind: “Here the brave voice broke.”
“Good-bye,” I cried. “Good-bye for ever. I shall never blame you,
darling. Perhaps in another land I’ll find my happiness again. Then
some day, when we both are bent and grey, and sentiment lies buried
under the frosts of time, we’ll meet again, and, clasping hands,
confess that all was for the best. And now, God bless you, Dora ... for
the last, last time, good-bye.”
Here “the brave voice broke” beautifully; then slowly and with drooping
head I made my exit from the room. Once in the street I drew a deep
breath.
“To be over-sympathetic is to be misunderstood,” I sighed. “Well, I’ve
given her a precious memory. Poor Mrs. Fitz!”
And, come to think of it, I had never kissed her, not even once.
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes later I had reached Riverside Drive, and was being
shown into the luxurious apartment of Miss Boadicia Tevandale.
She was an orphan and an heiress, only child of Tevandale the big
corporation lawyer, himself an author, whose _Tevandale on Torts_ had
almost as big a circulation as my _Haunted Taxicab_. Socially she moved
in a more exalted sphere than I, but we had met at some of the less
exclusive functions, and she had majestically annexed me.
Though her dearest enemy could not have called her “fat,” there was
just a suggestion of a suggestion that at some time in the future
she might possibly develop what might be described as an adipose
approximation. At present she was merely “big.”
I rather resent bigness in a woman. A female’s first duty is to be
feminine--to be small, dainty, helpless. I genuinely dislike holding a
hand if it is larger than my own, and I can understand the feelings
of Wainwright who poisoned his sister-in-law because her thick ankles
annoyed him. However, Boadicia had really been very nice to me. It
would have been terribly rude on my part to have ignored her overtures
of friendship. Consequently we had been seen much together, and had
drifted into what the world regarded as a sentimental attachment. With
my faculty, then, for entering into such situations, I was sometimes
convinced that my feelings for her were those of real warmth. Indeed,
once or twice, in moments of great enthusiasm, I almost suspected
myself of being mildly in love with her.
She received me radiantly, and she, too, gave me both hands. On the
third finger of the left one I noted the sparkle of a new diamond.
“Hello, stranger,” she said, gaily. “Just in time for tea. It seems
ages since I’ve seen you. Why haven’t you been near me for a whole
fortnight?”
I was going to make the usual excuses, when suddenly that devil of
sentiment entered into me. So, trying to give my face a pinched look, I
answered in a hollow voice:
“Can _you_ ask that?”
She looked at me in surprise. “Why, Horace, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, you women, you women!” I groaned bitterly.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, with some amazement.
“What do I mean? Are you blind? Have you no eyes as well as no heart?
Can you not see how I have loved you this long, long while; loved you
with a passion no tongue can tell? And now--”
I pointed dramatically to the new ring.
“Oh, _that_! Why, you don’t mean to say--”
“I mean to say that after I read of your engagement in this morning’s
_Town Tattle_ I went straight off and took a passage for Europe. I
leave to-morrow. I’ve just come to say good-bye.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, so sorry you feel that way about it. I never dreamed--”
“No, I have uttered no word, given no sign. How could I, knowing the
difference in our social positions? Break, break my heart, but I must
hold my tongue. So it seems I have kept my secret better even than I
knew. But it does not matter now. I have no word of reproach. To-morrow
I go, never to return. I pray you may be happy, very happy. And so,
good-bye....”
“Wait a moment! Good gracious!”
She laid a detaining hand on my arm, but I shook it off quite roughly,
and strode to the window. My face was stern and set; my shoulders
heaved with emotion. I had seen the leading man in our _Cruel Chicago_
Company (in which I doubled the parts of the waiter and the policeman)
use the same gesture with great effect.
“Why did I ever meet you?” I said harshly to a passing taxicab.
And strange as it may seem, at that moment I had really worked myself
into the spirit of the scene. I actually felt a blighted being, the
victim of a woman’s wiles. Then she was there at my side, pale,
agitated.
“I’m so grieved. Why didn’t you speak? If I’d only known you cared. But
then, you know, nobody takes you seriously. Perhaps, though, it’s not
too late. If you really, really care so much I’ll try to break off my
engagement with Bunny.”
(Bunny was Mr. Jarraway Tope, an elderly Pittsburg manufacturer of
suspenders--Tope’s “Never-tear Ever-wear Suspenders.”)
“No, no, it’s too late now,” I interrupted eagerly. “Things could never
be the same. Besides, he loves you. He’s a good old fellow. He will
make you happy, far happier than I could. He is rich; I am poor. It is
better so.”
“Riches are not everything,” she pouted miserably.
“No, but they’re the best imitation of it I know. Oh, you hothouse
flowers! You creatures of lace and luxury! You don’t know what it is
to be poor, to live from hand to mouth. How could you be happy in a
cottage--I mean a Brooklyn flat? No, no, Boadicia, we must not let
sentiment blind us. Never will I drag you down.”
“But there’s no question of poverty. You make lots of money?”
“A mere pittance,” I cried bitterly. “It’s my publishers who make the
money. I’m no man of business. On a few beggarly royalties how can
I hold up my end? No, I must put the world between us. Oh, it will
be all right. Some day when we are both old and grey, and sentiment
lies buried under the frost of time, we will perhaps meet again, and,
clasping hands, confess that all was for the best.”
“Oh, I hate to let you go away like that. If you have no money, I have.”
“As if I could ever touch a penny of yours,” I interrupted her sternly.
“Horace,” she pleaded, “you cut me to the heart. Don’t go.”
“Yes, yes. Believe me it’s best. Why prolong this painful scene? I’ll
pray for your happiness, for both of your happinesses, yours and
Bunny’s. Perhaps my heart’s not so badly broken after all.” (I smiled a
brave, twisted smile.) “For the last time, good-bye, good-bye.”
With that I rushed blindly from the room. When I reached the street, I
wiped away a few beads of perspiration.
“Oh, you everlasting, sentimental humbug!” I cried. “One of these days
you’ll get nicely nailed to the cross of your folly.”
CHAPTER V
A SEASICK SENTIMENTALIST
If ever I should come to write my autobiography (as I fondly hope in
the fulness of time my recognition as the American Dumas will justify
me in doing) it will fall easily into chapters. For, so far, my
life has consisted of distinct periods, each inspired by a dramatic
conception of myself. Let me then try to forecast its probable
divisions.
_Chapter I._--Boyhood. Violently imaginative period.--Devouring
ambition to become pirate chief.--Organised the “Band of
Blood.”--Antipathy to study.--Favourite literature: Jack Harkaway.
_Chapter II._--Youth. Violently athletic period.--Devouring ambition
to become great first baseman.--Organised the Angoras. Continued
antipathy to study.--Favourite literature: The sporting rags.
_Chapter III._--Cubhood. Violently red blood period.--Devouring
ambition to become champion broncho buster.--Went to Wyoming, and
became the most cowboyish cowboy in seven counties.--Favourite
literature: The yellow rags.
Chapter IV._--Undergraduate days. Violently intellectual
_period.--Devouring ambition to become literary mandarin.--Gave up
games and became a bookworm.--Commenced to write, but disdained
anything less than an epic.--Favourite literature: The French
decadents.
_Chapter V._--Adolescence. Violently histrionic period.--Devouring
ambition to become a second Mansfield.--Joined the _Cruel Chicago_
Company as general utility.--Chief literature: The theatrical rags.
_Chapter VI._--Manhood. At age of twenty-one wrote _The Haunted
Taxicab_, and scored immediate success.--Devouring ambition to write
the Great American Novel.--Published nine more books in next five
years, and managed to hold my own.
There you are--down to the time of which the present record tells. And
now, in accordance with the plot, let me continue.
On a certain muggy morning of late November, a young man of
conspicuously furtive bearing might have been seen climbing aboard the
steamer bound for Naples. He wore the brim of his velour hat turned
down, with the air of one who entirely wishes to avoid observation.
Over one arm hung a mackintosh, and at the end of the other dangled
an alligator-skin suitcase. An inventory of its contents would have
resulted as follows: A silk-lined, blue serge suit; three silk
_négligé_ shirts; three suits silk pyjamas; three suits silk underwear;
three pairs silk socks; several silk ties, and sundry toilet articles.
If, in the above list, an insistence on the princely fabric is to
be remarked, I must confess that I shrink from the contact of baser
material. It was then with some dismay that I descended into the bowels
of the ship, and was piloted to my berth by a squinting steward in
shirt-sleeves. I gazed with distaste at the threadbare cotton blanket
that was to replace the cambric sheets of the mighty. Then I looked at
the oblique-eyed one, and observed that nonchalantly over his arm was
hung another blanket of more sympathetic texture, and that his palm
protruded in a mercenary curve. So into that venial hollow I dropped
half a dollar, and took the extra blanket. Then throwing my suitcase on
the berth, I went on deck.
Shades of Cæsar! Garibaldi! Carusa! What had I “gone up against”?
One and all my fellow passengers seemed to be of the race of garlic
eaters. Not a stodgy Saxon face among them. Verily I was marooned in
a sea of dagos. Here we were, caged like cattle; above us, a tier
of curious faces, the superior second class; still higher, looking
down with disdain, the fastidious firsts. And here, herded with these
degenerate Latins, under these derisive eyes, must I remain many days.
What a wretched prospect! What rotten luck! And all the fault of these
gad-about Chumley Graces, confound them!
But I did not lament for long. If ever there is an opening for the
sentimentalist it is on leaving for the first time his native land.
Could it be expected, then, that I, a professional purveyor of
sentiment, would be silent? Nay! as I watched the Statue of Liberty
diminish to an interrogation mark, I delivered myself somewhat as
follows:
“Grey sea, grey sky, and grey, so grey
The ragged roof-line of my home;
Yet greyer far my mood than they,
As here amid this spawn of Rome
With tenderness undreamt before
I sigh: ‘Adieu, my native shore!’
“To thee my wistful eyes I strain;
To thee, brave burg, I wave my hand;
Good-bye, oh giddy Tungsten Lane!
Good-bye, oh great Skyscraper Land!
Good-bye, Fifth Avenue so splendid...!!”
And here my doggerel I ended.... Horrors on horrors! Could I believe
my eyes? There, looking down from the promenade deck, in long ulsters
and jaunty velour hats, were the three Misses Chumley Grace. They were
laughing happily, and looking right at me. Could anything, I wonder,
have equalled the rapidity of my retreat? As rabbit dives into its
burrow, as otter into its pool, so dived I, down, down to the dark hole
they called my cabin, where I collapsed disgustedly on my bunk.
And there for five days I remained.
It may be assumed (so much are we the creatures of an artificial
environment) that it is only in the more acute phases of life we
realise our truer selves. As a woman in the dental chair, as a fat man
coaxing a bed down a narrow stairway, as both sexes in the clutches of
_mal-de-mer_, are for the moment stripped of all paltering pretence, so
in the days that followed I had many illuminating glimpses of my inner
nature. Never was a man more rent, racked, ravaged by the torments of
sea-sickness. But let me read you an extract from my diary:
“Eight hundred Italians on board, and we are packed like sardines
in a keg. Our wedge-shaped cabin is innocent of ventilation. The
bunks are three tiers high and three abreast; so that, as I have an
outer one, a hulky Dago ascends and descends me a hundred times a
day. Also I am on the lower row, and as both the men above me are
violently sick, my situation may be imagined. The sourly stinking
floors are swilled out every morning. My only comfort is that I am
too calloused with misery to care about anything.
“It’s the awful, brutal sinking that fixes me; as if I were suddenly
being let down the elevator shaft of the Singer Building at full
speed, ten thousand times a day, then as suddenly yanked up again. By
the dim light I can see hundreds of cockroaches crawling everywhere
around me, elongated, coffee-coloured cockroaches, big ones,
middle-sized ones, tiny baby ones. They wander to and fro, fearless
and apparently aimless. But perhaps I am wrong about this. Perhaps
they are moved by a purpose; perhaps they are even in the midst of
a celebration--following the mazes of a cockroach cotillion. As I
lie watching them I speculate on this. What they live on may be
guessed at. And as if to mock me on my bed of woe all the rollicking,
frolicking sea-songs I have ever heard keep up a devilish concert in
my head, singing the praises of this fiendish and insatiable sea.”
For nine-tenths of his time the artist lives the lives of other men
more vividly than his own; for the other tenth, his own ten times more
vividly than other men. Of such transcendent tenths creation comes.
It was then from the very poignancy of my sufferings that I began to
evolve a paper on the pangs of _mal-de-mer_. It was to be the final
expression of the psychology of sea-sickness. Even as I lay squirming
in that sour, viscid gloom I rejoiced in the rapture of creation. It
seemed, I thought, the best thing I had ever done. Though I had not put
pen to paper, there it was, clearly written in my brain, every word
sure of its election, every sentence ringing true. I longed to see it
staring me from the printed page.
And on the morning of the sixth day I arose and regarded my shaving
mirror. My face had peaked and paled, and was covered with fluffy
hair, so that I looked like a pre-Raphaelite Christ. Indeed, so
æsthetic was my appearance I had to restrain myself from speaking in
blank verse.
How glorious was the clear, sweet air again! | With every breath of it
I felt new life. | The sea was very amiable now, | and playing children
paved the sunlit deck. | A score of babies punctuated the picturesque
confusion. On the decks above the plebeian seconds and the patrician
firsts presented two tiers of amused faces. They were like curious
spectators looking down into a bear pit.
Then suddenly did I realise my severance from my class, and, strange
to say, it aroused in me a kind of defiant rage. For the first time
democracy inspired me. For five days I had starved and suffered--or was
it five years? Anyway, the life of luxury and ease seemed far away.
Goaded by the gay shouts of the shuffle-boarders on the upper deck, I
felt to the full the resentment of the under-dog; yea, ready to raise
the red flag of revolt behind blood-boltered barricades of hate.
But all at once I became conscious of another sensation equally
exorbitant. It was the first pang of a hunger such as never in my life
had I endured. In imagination I saw myself at Sherry’s, conning the
bill of fare. With what an undreamt-of gusto I made a selection! How I
revelled in a dazzling vision of delicate dishes served with sympathy!
It was a gourmet’s dream, the exquisite conception of a modern
Lucullus. I almost drooled as I dictated it to a reverent head-waiter.
Yea, I was half hunger-mad. When, oh when, would lunch-time come?
It came. It was the first meal I had seen served in the steerage,
and it was served in buckets. You dipped into one, spiked a slab of
beef floating in greasy swill, shovelled a wad of macaroni from a tin
wash-basin to your tin plate, grabbed a chunk of stale bread from a
clothes basket: there you were, set up for another five hours.
Too ravenous to demur, I seized my tin plate and rushed the
ration-slingers. The messy meat I could not stomach, but I pryed loose
a little mountain of macaroni. I was busy wolfing it when on looking up
I saw the youngest Miss Chumley Grace regarding me curiously. With many
others she had come to see the animals fed.
“It’s dollars to doughnuts,” I thought, “she’ll never know me in this
beard. But all the same I’ll keep my face concealed.”
I had finished feeding, and was washing my plate at a running tap, when
all at once I dropped it as if it had been red-hot. Brushing every one
aside I made a leap for my cabin, and reached it, I will swear, in
record time. Frantically I felt under the pillow of my bunk. Too late!
Too late! The wallet in which I kept my money was gone.
“Alas!” I sighed. “My faith in Roman honesty has received a nasty
knock.”
I did not report my loss. I was afraid the inevitable fuss would betray
me to the Chumley Graces. I seemed to spend my whole time dodging them
now. Once or twice I found the spectacled gaze of poppa fixed upon me.
Many times I sneaked away under the scrutiny of the girls. All this
added to my other miseries, which in themselves might have served
Dante for another canto of his Inferno.
But at last it was over. There was the blue bay of Naples. Now we were
manœuvring into the seething harbour. Now we were keeping off with
streams of water boatmen who retaliated by hurling billets of wood.
Now we were throwing dimes to the diving boys. Now there ran through
the ship the thrill of first contact with the dock. Hurrah! In a few
more moments I should be free, free to follow the Trail of Beautiful
Adventure. True, I was broke; but what a fine, clean feeling that was!
Clutching my alligator-skin suitcase I reconnoitered, with
conspiratorial wariness. Cautiously I crept out. Softly I sneaked over
to the nearest gangway. My foot was on it; in another moment I would
have made my escape. I could have laughed with joy when--a little hand
was laid on my arm, and turning quickly I found myself face to face
with the youngest Miss Chumley Grace.
“Oh, Mr. Madden,” she chirped, “we knew you all along, but it’s been
such fun watching you. Do tell me, now, aren’t you just doing it for a
bet?”
CHAPTER VI
AN INVOLUNTARY FIANCÉ
Alas and alas! I am engaged--an engagement according to Hoyle,
sanctioned by poppa and sealed with a solitaire--irrevocably,
overwhelmingly, engaged.
Who would have dreamed it? But in the great round-up of matrimony,
isn’t it always the unexpected that happens? I was run down, roped,
thrown, before I knew what was happening to me. And the brand on me is
“Guinivere Chumley Grace.”
She is the youngest, the open-airiest, the most super-strenuous of the
sporting sisters. She slays foxes, slaughters pheasants, has even made
an air-flight. I have no doubt she despises poor, ordinary women who
cook steaks, darn socks and take an intelligent interest in babies.
And this is the girl I am going to marry, I who hate horse-flesh, would
not slay a blue-bottle promenading on my nose, admire the domestic
virtues, and hope that a woman will never cease to scream at the sight
of a mouse. Can it be wondered at that I am in the depths of despair?
And it is all the fault of Italy?
Naples sprang at me, and, as we say, “put it all over me.” Such welters
of colourful life! Such visions of joy and dirt! Such hot-beds of
rank-growing humanity! Diving boys and piratical longshoremen; plumed
guardians of the police and ragged _lazzaroni_; whooping donkey drivers
and pestiferous guides; clamour, colour, confusion, all to bewilder my
prim Manhattan mind.
What a disappointment that had been; to stand there one exultant moment
with the Trail of Beautiful Adventure glimmering before; the next,
to be hemmed in by the jubilant Chumley Graces, and hurried to the
haughtiest of hotels, where poppa insisted on cashing my cheque for
five hundred dollars.
But resignation to one’s fate is comparatively easy in Naples. There,
where villa and vineyard dream by an amethystine sea where purple Capri
and violet Vesuvius shimmer and change with every mood of sun and
breeze, the line of least resistance seems alluringly appropriate.
There were days in which (accompanied by Miss Guinivere Chumley Grace)
I roamed the Via Roma, stimulated by the vivid life that seethed around
me; when I watched the bronze fishermen pull in their long, sea-curving
nets; when the laziness of the _lazzaroni_ fell upon me.
There were evenings in which (accompanied by Guinivere Chumley Grace)
I sat on the terrace of the hotel, caressed by the balmy breeze,
listening to the far-borne melody of mandolins, and gazing at the topaz
lights that fringed the throbbing vast of foam and starlight.
There were nights when (accompanied by Guinivere) I watched the dull
reflection of fiery-bowled Vesuvius, dreaming of the richly storied
past, and feeling my heart stir with a thousand sweet wonderings of
romance.
Can it be wondered, then, that some of this rapture and romance found
an echo in my heart? Here was the time, the place, and--Guinivere. Only
by a violent effort could I have saved myself, and violent efforts in
Naples are unpopular. No; everything seemed to happen with relentless
logic; and so one afternoon, looking down on the sweeping glory of the
bay the following conversation took place:
SHE: Isn’t it ripping?
I: Yes, it’s too lovely for words. Why cannot we make our lives a
harvest of such golden memories?
SHE: Yes, it would be awfully jolly, wouldn’t it?
I: If we cannot make the moment eternal, let us at least live eternal
in the moment.
SHE: But how can we?
I wasn’t sure how we could, nor was I sure what I meant; but the
freckled face was looking up at me so inquiringly, and the crisp-lipped
mouth was pouted so invitingly that I sought the solution there.
She, on her part, evidently found it so satisfactory that I laid
considerable emphasis on it, and I was still further accentuating the
emphasis when on looking up I found myself confronted by the stony,
spectacled stare of poppa.
Anathema! Miseracordia! After that there was nothing to do but ask for
his blessing. I could not plead poverty, for he is a director in most
of the railways in which I hold shares. The god of fools, who had so
often moved to save me, had this time left me on the lurch. So it came
about that I spent three hundred dollars out of my five in the purchase
of a diamond ring; and there matters stand.
Well, I shall have to go through with it. If there is one idea more
than another I hold up to myself it is that of The Man who Makes Good.
I have never been untrue to my promises; and now I have promised
Guinivere a cottage at Newport and a flat in town. Life looms before me
a grey vista of conventional monotony and Riverside Drive.
If only she cared for any of the things I do! But no! She is one of the
useless daughters of the rich, who expect to be petted, pampered and
provided for in the way they have been accustomed, forgetting that the
old man struggled a lifetime to give them that limousine and the house
on Fifth Avenue. She is one of the great army of women who think men
should sweat that women may spend. I have always maintained that it was
a woman’s place to do her share of the work; and here I was, marrying a
pleasure-seeker, an idler.
Better, I thought, some daughter of democracy; yea, even such a one as
but a little ago tidied my apartment, that dark-haired damsel with the
melancholy mouth and the eyes of an odalisque.
As I pretended to work I had often watched my charming chambermaid; but
my interest was purely professional, till one day it was stimulated by
an unusual incident. There was a villainous-looking valet-de-chambre
who brought me my coffee and rolls in the morning, and who presided
over a little pantry from which they seemed to emanate. Passing this
pantry, I witnessed a brisk scuffle between the chambermaid and the
valet. He made an effort to kiss her, and she repulsed him with evident
disgust. From then on I could see the two were at daggers drawn, and
that the man only waited a chance to take his revenge.
After that, it may not be deemed strange that I should have taken a
more personal interest in my hand-maid; that I should have practised
my Italian on her on every opportunity; that I should have found her
name to be Lucrezia Poppolini, and that of her tormentor, Victor.
A spirit of protection glowed in me; I half hoped for dramatic
developments, pitied her in her evident unhappiness, and vowed that if
she were persecuted any more I would take a hand in the game.
In a rhapsodic vein I had begun an article on Naples, and ranged far
and wide in search of impressions. It was one evening I had pleaded
work to escape from Guinivere (who was getting on my nerves), and I
had sought the quarter of the town down by the fish-market. Frequently
had I been moved to remark that in Naples there seemed to be no danger
of depopulation, and the appearance of a good woman approaching
strengthened my conviction. Then as she came close I saw that she
was only a girl, very poor, and intensely miserable. But something
else made me start and stare: she was the exact counterpart of my
interesting chambermaid.
“Perhaps they are twin sisters,” thought I. “This girl’s trouble would
account for the worry and sadness on the face of Lucrezia. Here is
material for drama.”
So taken was I by my twin-sister theory, that I ended by
half-convincing myself I was right. Then, by a little play of fancy, I
allowed for the following dramatis personæ:
“Victor, the Villainous Valet.
Lucrezia, the Chaste Chambermaid.
Twin Sister in trouble.
False Lover of Twin Sister.
Aged Parent.”
Thus you will see how my little drama was interesting me. On her daily
visits to my room, I watched my poor heroine with sympathetic heart.
What was going to happen? Probably Aged Parent would stab False Lover,
and Villainous Valet, who happened to witness the deed, would demand
as the price of his silence the honour of Chaste Chambermaid. How I
began to hate the man as he roused me at eight o’clock with my steaming
Mocha! How I began to pity the girl as dreary and distraught she
changed my towels! Surely the _dénouement_ was close at hand.
Poppa and I shared a parlour from which opened out respective bedrooms.
It had outlook on the bay, and often the girls would sit there with
their father instead of in their own _salon_. I was not surprised,
then, on my return from a copy-hunting expedition to hear the sound of
many voices coming from within.
But I was decidedly surprised, on opening the door, to find quite a
dramatic scene being enacted. The backs of the actors were to me, and
they did not see me enter. In the centre of the stage, as it were, were
Victor and Lucrezia. Behind them the fat little manager of the hotel.
To the right poppa and Guinivere. To the left Edythe and Gladys, the
elder sisters.
Lucrezia looked pale as death, and cowered as if some one had struck
her. Facing her, with flashing eyes and accusive digit was the vengeful
Victor. The little manager was trying to control the situation, while
poppa and offspring, staring blankly, were endeavouring to follow the
Italian of it.
“Baggage! Thief!” Victor was crying. “I saw her. I stole after her! I
watched her enter the signor’s room. There on the dressing-table it
was, the little purse he had so carelessly left. She draws near, she
examines it ... quick! She pushes it into her blouse--so. Oh, I saw it
all through the chink of the door.”
“No, no,” the girl protested, in accents of terror and distress; “I
took nothing, I swear by the Virgin, nothing. He lies. He would make
for me trouble. I am innocent, innocent.”
“I am no liar,” snarled the man. “If you do not believe me, see--she
has it now. Search her. Look in the bosom of her dress. Ah! I will....”
He caught her roughly. There was a scuffle in which she screamed, and
from her corsage he tore forth a small flat object.
“What did I tell you!” he cried vindictively. “Who is the liar now? Oh,
thief! thief! I, Victor, have unmasked thee--”
Here he turned round and suddenly beheld me. His manner grew more
exultant. “Ha! It is the signor himself.”
Then I saw that what he held out so triumphantly was my little gold
purse, and in the breathless pause that followed, cinema pictures were
flashing and flickering in my brain. How vivid they were! Twin sister
imploring aid--girl distracted--no money to give her--What’s to be
done?--Suddenly sees gold purse--Temptation: “I’ll just borrow one
little piece. The signor will never miss it. Some day I’ll pay it back.”
How she struggles, gazes at it like one fascinated, puts out a hand,
shrinks back, looks round fearfully! Then at last she takes it in her
hand;--a sudden noise,--impulsively she pushes it in the bosom of her
dress. Then Victor’s high pitched voice of denunciation, bringing every
one on the scene.
All this I saw in a luminous moment, but--where did I come in? My
heart bled for the poor girl so tried, so tempted. A quixotic flame
leapt in me. There was the vindictive valet; there was the frail
Lucrezia; there was the centre of the stage waiting for what?--me. Ah!
could I ever resist the centre of the stage?
So I stepped quietly forward, and, to complete the artistic effect, the
girl, who had been gazing at me with growing terror, swayed as if to
faint. Deftly I caught her over my left arm; then with the other hand I
snatched the purse from the astonished Victor, and deliberately pushed
it back into the blouse of Lucrezia.
“The girl is innocent,” I said calmly; “the money is her own. I,
myself, gave it to her,--this morning.”
* * * * *
Of the scene that followed I have no vivid recollection. I was
conscious that poppa herded his flock hurriedly from the room; that
Lucrezia disappeared with surprising suddenness; that the dumbfounded
Victor was ordered to “begone” by an indignant _maître d’hôtel_, who,
while extremely polite, seemed to regard me with something of reproach.
I was, in fact, rather dazed by my sudden action, so hastily packing
the alligator-skin suitcase I paid my bill and ordered a carriage.
Telling the man to drive in the direction of Possillipo, I there
selected a hotel of a more diffident type, and, in view of my reduced
finances, engaged a single room.
The day following was memorable for two interviews. The first, in the
forenoon, was with poppa. He had no doubt found my address from the
coachman, and had come to have it out with me. In his most puritanical
manner he wanted to know why I gave the girl the money.
“I refuse to explain,” I said sourly.
“Then, sir, I must refuse to consider you worthy of my daughter’s hand.”
My heart leapt. Escape from Guinivere! It seemed too good to be true.
Lucrezia, I thank thee! Nor do I grudge thee twice the gold thy purse
contains. Concealing my joy I answered:
“It shall be as you please, sir.”
His church-deacon face relaxed a little. He had evidently expected more
trouble.
“And I must ask you, sir, not to communicate with her in any way.”
I summoned a look of sadness worthy of a lover whose heart is broken.
“As her father,” I observed submissively, “your wishes must be
respected.”
He laid a small box on the table. “Guinivere returns you your ring.”
Then he hesitated a little. “Have you nothing at all to say for
yourself? I too have been young; I can make some allowance, but there
are limits. I don’t like to think that you are an absolute scoundrel.”
“If I were to tell you,” I said, “that I gave the girl the money out
of pure philanthropy, gave it to help a wretched twin sister with an
unborn babe,--what would you say?”
“I would say you were trying to bolster up your intrigue with a
fiction. Bah! Young men don’t give purses of gold to pretty girls out
of philanthropy. Besides, we have discovered that your precious friend
is nothing more or less than a hotel thief. A detective arrived just
after you left and identified her.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said indignantly. “These Italian women all look
alike. Where’s the poor girl now?”
He grinned sarcastically. “Probably it is I who should ask you that.”
His meaning was so obvious I rose and smilingly opened the door. Off he
went with a snort, and that was the last I ever saw of poppa.
But my second interview! It took place at ten in the evening. I was
reading the Italian paper in bed when there came a soft knock at my
door.
“Come in,” I said, thinking it was the valet with my nightcap. Then,
as if moved by a spring I sat bolt upright. With one hand I tried to
fasten the neck button of my pyjamas, with the other to smooth down my
disordered locks. I verily believe I blushed all over, for who should
my late visitor be but--Lucrezia.
She was dressed astonishingly well, and looked altogether different
from the slim, trim domestic I had known. Indeed, being all in black,
she might have well passed for a charming young widow. Of course I was
embarrassed beyond all words, but if she shared my feeling she did not
show it.
“Oh, signor, how can I thank you?” she cried, advancing swiftly.
“Not at all,” I stammered; “pray calm yourself. Excuse me receiving you
in this deshabille. Please take a seat.”
I indicated a chair some distance away, but to my confusion she seated
herself near me. I reached for my jacket and wriggled into it; after
which I felt more at ease.
“I have just found out where you were,” she began. “I could not wait
until to-morrow to thank you. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
Really she spoke remarkably well. Really she looked remarkably
stunning. Her complexion had the tone of old ivory, and her eyes of an
odalisque seemed to refract all the light of the room. I could feel
them fixed on me in a distracting, magnetising way.
“Don’t mention it,” I answered; “there’s nothing to forgive. It’s very
good of you to think of thanking me.”
She begun to fumble with a glove button. “Tell me,” she almost
whispered, “tell me, why did you do it?”
“Oh, I--I don’t quite know?”
She threw out her hands with an impulsive gesture. Her black eyes
glowed fiercely, then grew soft.
“Was it because you--you loved me?”
I stared. This was too much. Was the girl mad? I replied with some
asperity:
“No, it was because I thought you must be in some desperate trouble. I
was sorry for you. I wanted to save you.”
“Ah! you were right. I was in great trouble, and you alone understood.
You are noble, signor, noble; but you are cold. We women of the South,
we are so different. When we love, we love with all the heart. We do
not conceal it; we do not deny it. Know, then, signor, from the moment
you came so bravely to my aid like some hero of romance I loved you,
loved you with a passion that makes me forget all else. And you, you do
not care. It is nothing to you. Oh, unhappy me! Tell me, signor, do you
not think you can love me?”
I shrank back to the furthest limit of the bed-post. Again I thought:
“Surely the girl is mad, perhaps dangerous as well. I’ve heard that
these Neapolitan girls all carry daggers. I hope this young lady
doesn’t follow the fashion. I think I’d better humour her.”
Aloud I said: “I don’t know. This is so sudden I haven’t had time to
analyse my feelings yet. Perhaps I do. Give me to-night to think of it.
Come to-morrow. But anyway, why should I let myself love you? I am a
bird of passage. I have business. I must go away in a few days.”
“Where is the signor going?”
“To Paris,” I said cautiously.
Her strange eyes gleamed with tragic fire. “If you go to Paris without
me,” she cried passionately, “I will follow you.”
“Well, well,” I said soothingly, “we’ll see. But now please leave me
to think of all this. Don’t you see I’m agitated? You’ve taken me by
surprise. Please give me till to-morrow.”
Her brows knit with jealous suspicion. I half thought she was going to
reach for that dagger, but instead she rose abruptly.
“Oh, you are cold, you men of the North. I shall leave you at once.”
“Yes,” I answered eagerly; “go quickly, before any one finds you here.”
“Bah!” she exploded with fierce contempt; “what does it matter? But,
signor, will you let me kiss you?”
“Certainly, if you wish.” I extended one cheek.
She gave me a quick, smothering embrace from which I had difficulty in
detaching myself. “To-morrow, then, without fail. But where and when?”
“I’ll meet you at the Aquarium at eleven o’clock,” I said.
“At the Aquarium, then. And you’ll think of me? And you’ll try to love
me?”
“Yes, yes, I will. Please go out very quietly. Au revoir till eleven
to-morrow.”
But by eleven o’clock next morning I was exultantly on my way to
London.
CHAPTER VII
A BOTTLE OF INK
The disadvantage of persistent globe-trotting is that it makes the
world so deplorably provincial. With familiarity the glamour of the
far and strange is swept away, till at last there is nothing left
to startle and delight. Better, indeed, to leave shrines unvisited
and shores unsought; then may we still hold them fondly under the
domination of dream.
Much had I read of the lure of London, of its hold upon the heart; but
to the end I entirely failed to realise its charm. To me in those grim
December days it always remained the City of Grime and Gloom, so that I
ultimately left it the poorer by a score of lost illusions.
Drawing near the Great Grey City--how I had looked forward to this
moment as, alert to every impression, I stared from the window of the
train! Yet at its very threshold I shrank appalled. Could I believe my
eyes? There confronting me was street after street of tiny houses all
built in the same way. Nay, I do not exaggerate. They were as alike
as ninepins, dirty, drab cubes, each with the same oblong of sordid
back-yard, the same fringe of abortive front garden. Oh what a welter
of architectural crime! Could it be wondered at that the bricks of
which they were composed seemed to blush with shame?
Then the roofs closed in till they formed a veritable plain, on which
regiments of chimneys seemed to stand at attention amid saffron fog.
Then great, gloomy corrugations, down which I could see ant-like armies
moving hither and thither: then an arrest in a place of steam and smoke
and skurrying and shouting: Charing Cross Station.
How it was spitefully cold! Autos squattered through the tar-black mud.
A fine drizzle of rain was falling, yet save myself no one seemed to
mind it--so cheery and comfortable seemed those red-faced Islanders
in their City of Soot. Soot, at that moment, was to me all-dominant.
Eagerly it overlaid the buildings of brick; joyfully it grimed those of
stone. It swathed the monuments, and it achieved on the churches daring
effects in black and grey. After all, it had undoubted artistic value.
Then a smudge of it settled on my nose, and with every breath I seemed
to inhale it. Finally a skittish motor bus bespattered me with that
tar-like mud and I felt dirtier than ever.
But what amount of drizzle could damp my romantic ardour as suitcase in
hand I stood in Trafalgar Square? Here was another occasion for that
sentimental reverie which was my specialty, so I began:
“Alone in London, in the seething centre of its canorous immensity.
Around me swirl the swift, incurious crowds. Oh, City of a million
sorrows! here do I come to thee poor, friendless, unknown, yet oh! so
rich in hope. Shall I then knock at thy countless doors in vain? Shall
I then--”
A sneeze interrupted me at this point. It is hard to sneeze and be
sentimental; besides, I recognised in the words I had just spoken
those I had put into the mouth of Harold Cleaveshaw, hero of my novel,
_The Handicap_. But then Harold had posed in the centre of Madison
Square and addressed his remarks to the Flatiron Building, while I
was addressing the Nelson Monument and a fountain whose water seemed
saturated with soot.
Do not think the moment was wasted, however. Far from it. The likeness
suggested an article comparing the two cities. For instance: New York,
a concretion; London, an accretion; New York, an uplift; London,
an outspread; New York, blatant; London, smug; New York, a city on
tiptoe, raw, bright, wind-besomed; London, the nightmare of a dyspeptic
chimney-sweep; New York, a city born, organic, spontaneous; London, an
accident, a patchwork, a piecing on; and so on.
Pondering these and other points of contrast, I wandered up Charing
Cross Road into Oxford Street. In a bookshop I saw, with a curious
feeling of detachment, a sixpenny edition of my novel, _The Red
Corpuscle_. Somehow at that moment I could scarcely associate myself
with it. So absorbed was I becoming in my new part that the previous
one was already unreal to me. I took up the book with positive dislike,
and was turning it over when an officious shop-boy suggested:
“Don’t you want to read it, mister?”
“Heaven forbid!” I replied; “I wrote it.”
He sniffed, as much as to say, “Think you’re smart, don’t you?”
Up Southampton Row I chanced, and in a little street off Tavistock
Square I found a temporary home. A cat sleeping on a window-sill
suggested Peace, and a donkey-cart piled high with cabbages pointed
to Plenty. But as cabbages do not find favour in the tyrannical
laboratory of my digestion, I vetoed Mrs. Switcher’s proposal that
I take dinner in the house. However, I ordered ham and eggs every
morning, with an alternative of haddock or sausage and bacon.
These matters settled, I found myself the tenant of a fourth-floor
front in a flat brick building of triumphant ugliness. I could see a
melancholy angle of the square, some soot-smeared trees stretching in
inky tentacles to a sullen sky, a soggy garden that seemed steeped in
despairing contemplation of its own unworthiness.
For Mrs. Switcher, my landlady, I conceived an enthusiastic dislike.
A sour, grinding woman who reminded me of a meat-axe, I christened
her Rain-in-the-Face in further resemblance of a celebrated Indian
Chief. But if I found in her no source of a sympathetic inspiration,
in the near-by Reading-room of the British Museum there certainly
was. In that studious calm, under battalions of books secure in their
circles of immortality, I was profoundly happy. Often I would pause
to study those about me, the spectacled men, the literary hack with
the shiny coat-sleeve of the Reading-room habitué, the women whose
bilious complexions and poky skirts suggested the league of desperate
spinsterhood.
A thousand ghosts haunted that great dome. It was a mosaic of faces
of dead and gone authors, wistfully watching to see if you would read
their books. And if you did, how they hovered down from the greyness
and smiled sweetly on you; other ghosts there were too, ghosts of the
famous ones who had bent over these very benches, who had delved into
that mine of thought just as I was delving. Here they had toiled and
triumphed, even as I would toil and triumph. Spurred and exalted, under
that great dome where the only sound seemed to be the whirr of busy
brains, I spent hours of rarest rapture.
To the solitary the spirits whisper. Ideas came to me at this time in a
bewildering swarm, and often I regretted some fancy lost, some subtlety
unset to words. So by book-browsing, by curious roaming, by brooding
thought, my mental life extended its horizons. Yet knowing no one,
speaking to no one, living so much within myself, each day became more
dreamlike and unreal. There were times when I almost doubted my own
identity, times when, if you had assured me I was John Smith, I would
have been inclined to agree with you.
With positive joy I watched my money filter away. “Good!” I reflected.
“I shall soon be penniless, reduced to eating stale crusts and
sleeping on the iron benches of the Embankment. Who can divine the
dazzling possibilities of vicissitude? All my life I have battled with
prosperity; now, at last, I shall achieve adversity. I will descend the
ladder of success. I will rub shoulders with Destitution. I may even be
introduced to Brother Despair.”
Enthusiasm glowed in me at the thought, and absorbed in those ambitious
dreams I cried: “Thank God for life’s depths, that we may have the
glory of outclimbing them.”
And here be it said, we make a mistake when we pity the poor. It is the
rich we should pity, those who have never known the joy of poverty, the
ecstasy of squeezing the dollar to the last cent. How good the plain
fare looks to our hunger! How sweet the rest after toil! How exciting
the uncertainty of the next day’s supper! How glorious the unexpected
windfall of a few coppers! Was ever nectar so exquisite as that cup of
coffee quaffed at the stall on the Embankment after a night spent on
those excruciating benches? Never to have been desperately poor--ah!
that is never to have lived.
My shibboleth at this time was a large bottle of ink which I bought and
placed on my mantelpiece. Through a haze of cigarette smoke I would
address it whimsically:
“Oh, exquisite fluid, what magic words are hidden in thine ebon heart!
What lover’s raptures and what gems of thought! Let others turn to
dusty ledgers your celestial stream, to bills of lading and to dull
notorial deeds; to me you are the poet’s dream, the freaksome fancy
of the essayist, the stuff that shapes itself in precious prose. In
you, oh most divine elixir, fame and fortune are dissolved. In you,
enchanted liquid, strange stories simmer, and bright humour bubbles
up. Oh, magical bottle, of whom I will make life and light, gold and
jewels, laughter and tears, thrill to your dusky heart with the sense
of immortality!”
It was while surveying the garbage heap in the rear of Mrs. Switcher’s
premises that there came to me the idea of a short story, to be called
_The Microbe_.
Through reading an article in a magazine Mr. Perkins, a middle-aged
clerk in a dry-salter’s warehouse, becomes interested in the Germ
Theory. Half-contemptuous at first, he begins to make a study of it,
and soon is quite fascinated. Being of a high-strung, imaginative
nature, the thing gets on his nerves, and he begins to think germs,
to dream germs, to dread germs every moment of his life. He fears them
in the air he breathes, in the food he eats, even on the library books
that tell him all about them.
Mr. Perkins becomes obsessed. He refuses to kiss the somewhat overblown
rose of his affections, to enter a train, an omnibus, a theatre. He
analyses his food, sterilises his water, disinfects his room daily,
till his landlady gives him notice. Finally he can no longer breathe
the air of a microbe-infected office, and he resigns the situation he
has held for twenty years to become a tramp. Yet even here, in the wind
on the heath, on the hill’s top, by the yeasty sea, there is no peace
for him. He broods, he fasts, he becomes a monomaniac. Then he thinks
of the germs in his own body, of the good microbes and the naughty
microbes fighting their vendetta from birth to death, his very blood
their battleground.
No longer can he bear it. He realises the impossibility of escape.
He himself is a little world, a civil war of microbes. How he hates
them! Yet there remains to him his revenge. Ha! Ha! He has the power
to destroy that world. So beggared, broken, desperate, he returns to
London, and with a wild shriek of joy he throws himself from the Tower
Bridge.
Yea, even in the end he has been destroyed by a microbe, the most
deadly of all, the terrible Microbe called Fear.
One morning, dreamily incubating my story, I happened to glance out
of my window. I was gazing absently on my corner of the lugubrious
square when a little figure of a girl came into view. She wore a grey
mantle, and her face was like a splash of white. Walking with a quick,
determined step, in a moment she had disappeared.
In about five minutes I happened to look up again. There was the same
slim figure rounding the corner, to again disappear.
“Something automatic about this,” I said; “it’s getting interesting.”
So, taking out my watch, I judged the time, and in another five minutes
I looked up. Yes, there was my girl in grey walking with the same
purposeful stride.
“This is getting monotonous,” I observed, after I had seen her appear
and disappear a few more times. “Such persistent pedestrianism destroys
my powers of concentration. Let me then sally forth and see what this
mysterious young female is celebrating. Perhaps if I stare at her hard
enough she will choose either Russell or Bloomsbury Square for her
constitutional, and not distract a poor, hard-working story-grinder at
his labours.”
But when I got outside I found she had gone, so I decided to seek my
beloved Reading-Room and look up some articles on microbes.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GIRL WHO LOOKED INTERESTING
After a hard skirmish with the catalogue of the Reading-Room, which,
with reference and counter-reference, defied me stubbornly, yet finally
yielded to my assault, I found myself, three hours later, seated in an
A.B.C. restaurant in Southampton Row.
From motives of economy I had given up eating dinners. Breakfast and
a meat lunch were now my sole fortifying occasions, and of the latter
this A.B.C. was oftenest the scene. I liked its friendly fires, its
red plush chairs, its air of thrift and cheer. Behold me, then, a
studiously shabby young man, eating a shilling lunch and wearing as
a symbol of my servitude a celluloid collar. Little would you have
dreamed that but two short months before I had been toying with
terrapin in the gold room of Delmonico’s.
But such dramatic contrasts charm me, and I was placidly engaged in the
excavation of a Melton Mowbray pie, when a girl in grey took a place at
the next table. Her long mantle was rather the worse for wear, her hat
a cheap straw. Her small hands were encased in cotton gloves, and her
feet in foreign-looking shoes.
“Painfully poor,” I thought, “yet evidently a worshipper of the goddess
_Comme-il-faut_.” Then--“Why, surely I know her? Surely it is my
mysterious female of the matutinal Marathon.”
With timid hesitation she ordered a bun and milk. How interesting her
voice was! It had a bell-like quality the more marked because she
spoke with a strong inflection, and an odd precision of accent. A voice
with colour, I thought; violet; yes, she had a violet voice.
But I had not seen her face, only beneath her low straw hat her hair
of a gleamy brown, very fine of texture and so thick as to seem almost
black. It was brought round in a coiled braid over each ear, and, where
it parted at the back, showed a neck of ivory whiteness. Somewhat
curiously I wished she would turn her head.
Then, as if to please me, she did so, and what I saw was almost the
face of a child, so small and delicate of feature was it. It was almost
colourless, of a pure pallor that contrasted with the rich darkness of
her hair. The mouth was small and wistfully sweet, the chin rather long
and fine, the cheeks faintly hollowed. Her brow, I noted, was broad
and full, her eyebrows frank and well-defined. But it was the eyes
themselves that arrested me. They were set far apart and of a rare and
faultless sea-blue. Such eyes in a woman of real beauty would have been
pools of love for many a fool to drown in, and even in this fragile,
shrinking girl they were haunting, thrilling eyes. For the rest, she
was small, slender, sad-looking, and tired, yes, tired, as if she
wanted to rest and rest and rest.
“A consumptive type,” I thought irritably. “Seems quite worn out. Why
does she persist in that pedestrian foolishness--that’s what I want to
know?”
I watched her as she ate her bun, and when she rose I rose too. She
payed out of a worn little purse, a plethoric purse, but, alas! its
fulness was of copper. Down Woburn Street she disappeared, and I
looked after her with some concern. A gentle, shrinking creature,
pathetically afraid of life.
“God help her,” I said, “in this ruthless city, if she has neither
friends nor money.” I decided I would write a story around her, a story
of struggle and temptation. Yes, I would call it _The Girl Who Looked
Interesting_.
That night I thought a good deal about my girl and my story, but next
morning a distraction occurred. London revealed itself in the glory
of a fog. At last I was exultant. Here was the city I had come so far
to see. For the squat buildings seemed to take on dignity and height.
Through the mellow haze they loomed as vaguely as the domiciles of a
dream. The streets were corridors of mystery, and alone, abysmally
alone, I seemed to be in some city of fantasy and fear.
But the river--there the fog achieved its ghostliest effects. As I
wandered down the clammy embankment, cloud-built bridges emerged
ethereally, and the flat barges were masses of mysterious shadow.
St. Stephen’s was a spectral suggestion, and Whitehall a delicate
silver-point etching. I thanked the gods for this evasive and
intangible London, half-hidden, half-revealed in its vesture of
all-mystifying fog.
Well, I was tired at last, and I turned to go home. But I must have
missed my way, for I found myself in a long dim street, which I judged
by its furniture-fringed pavement to be Tottenham Court Road. Filled
with a pleasant sense of adventure, I kept on till I came to what
must have been Hampstead Road. There my eyes were drawn to a large
flamboyant painting above the window of a shop in a side-street.
Drawing near, I read in flaring letters the following:
EXHIBITION
AMAZING! AMUSING! UNIQUE!
O’FLATHER’S EDUCATED FLEAS
As performed with tremendous success before
all the Crowned Heads of Europe and the
Potentates of Asia. For a limited
time Professor O’Flather will
give the people of London
the opportunity of seeing
this extraordinary
exhibition.
Entertaining!
Instructive!
Original!
Come
and
See
THE SCIENTIFIC MARVEL OF THE CENTURY!
The marvellous insects that have all the
intelligence of human beings.
Admission, Sixpence. Children Half-price.
A large canvas showed a number of insects, vivaciously engaged in
duelling, dancing, drawing water from wells, and so on. Watching them
with beaming rapture was a distinguished audience, including the Czar
of Russia, the Emperor William, Li Hung Chang, the Shah of Persia, and
Mr. Roosevelt.
I was turning away when a big, ugly individual appeared in the
doorway. He was a heavy-breathing man with a mouth like a codfish, and
bloodshot eyes that peered through pouchy slits. He had a blotched,
greasy face that hung down in dewlaps. From under a Stetson hat his
stringy, brindled hair streamed over the collar of his fur-lined
coat. On his grubby hand an off-colour diamond, big as a pea, tried
to outsparkle another in the dirty bosom of his shirt. He reeked of
pomatum, and his teeth looked as if they had been cleaned with a towel.
No mistaking the born showman of the Bowery breed. Moved by a sudden
idea, I gracefully addressed him:
“Professor O’Flather, I presume?”
The impresario looked at me with lack-lustre eye. He transferred a chew
of tobacco from one cheek to the other; then he spat with marvellous
precision on a passing dog. Finally he admitted reluctantly:
“Yep! That’s me.”
“Pardon me, Professor, but I’m a newspaper man. I represent the
_Daily Dredger_, with which, of course, you are familiar. I have been
specially commissioned by my journal to write up your exhibition. Can
you favour me with a brief interview?”
At the magic word “newspaper” his manner changed. He extended a hand
like a small ham.
“Right you are, mister. Always glad to see the noospaper boys.”
He ushered me into the shop, and, switching on a light, bellowed in
a voice of brass, “Jinny!” From behind a crimson curtain appeared a
little Jap girl in a green kimono.
“Faithful little devil!” said the Professor. “Met ’er in a Yokerhammer
joint, and fetched ’er along for the sake of the show. Jinny, uncover
the stock. This gen’lman’s a hintervooer.”
With eager pride the girl obeyed. From a glass case in the centre of
the room she removed a covering. The case was divided into sections, in
which were a number of suggestive shapes, supinely quiescent.
“We turn ’em over,” O’Flather explained, “when they ain’t working, so’s
they won’t use up all their force. We need it in the business.”
Then Jinny, with the delicacy of a lover, proceeded to put each through
its performance.
“That there’s Barthsheeber at the well,” said the Professor, pointing
with a fat forefinger to a black speck that was frantically raising and
lowering a string of buckets on an endless chain.
“Them’s the dooelists,” he went on, indicating two who, rearing on
their hind legs, clashed tiny swords with all the fire and fury of
Macbeth and Macduff.
“Here we have the original Tango Team,” he continued, showing a pair
who went through the motions of the dance in time to a tiny musical box.
Then, with pardonable pride, he drew my attention to a separate case
containing a well-made model of a little farm. “There!” he said,
extending his grubby hand, “all run by the little critters.” And, sure
enough, there were active little insects drawing ploughs up and down
green furrows; others were hoeing with tremendous energy; others mowing
with equal enthusiasm. Here, too, was a miniature threshing machine,
turned by four black specks lying on their backs, with other frantic
black specks feeding it, and an extra strenuous one forking away the
straw.
As I expressed my admiration of their industry, the Professor,
with growing gusto, dilated on the cleverness of his pets, and put
them through their paces. There was a funeral, a chariot race, a
merry-go-round, and some other contrivances no less ingenious. Lastly
he showed me a glass case containing many black specks.
“Raw material. Them’s the wild ones I keep to take the place of the
tame ones that dies. At first I have to put ’em in a bit of a glass
box like a pill box, and turning on an axis same’s a little treadmill.
That’s to break ’em of the jumping habit. Every time they jump--bing!
they hit the glass hard, so by and by they quit. But they have to keep
a-moving, because the box keeps going round. In a few days they’re
broke into walk all right.”
“Most ingenious!”
“All my own notion. Since I started in the business, many’s the hundred
I’ve broke in. I guess I know more about the little critters than any
man living.”
It was with a view to tap a little of this knowledge that I invited
the Professor to a near-by pub, and there, under the influence of
sympathetic admiration and hot gin, he expanded confidentially.
“All of them insects you saw,” he informed me, “comes from Japan. They
grow bigger over there, and more intelligent. I’ve experimented with
nigh every kind, but them Jap ones is the best. And here I want to say
that it’s only the females is any good. The males is mulish. Besides
they’re smaller and weaker, and not so intelligent. Funny that, ain’t
it. That’s an argyment for Woman’s Suffrage. No, the males is no good.”
“And how do you train them, Professor?” I queried.
“Well, first of all you’ve got to hitch ’em up, got to get a silk
thread round their waists. That’s a mighty ticklish oppyration, but
Jinny’s good at it. You see, they’re so slick cement won’t stick to
’em, and if you was to use wax it kills ’em in a day or two. So we’ve
got to get a silk loop round their middle, and cement a fine bristle to
it. Once we have ’em harnessed up we begin to train ’em. That’s just a
matter of patience. Some’s apter than others. Barthsheeber there was
very quick. In a few days she was on to her job.”
“And how long do they live?”
“Oh, about a year, but I’ve had ’em for nigh two. They got mighty weak
towards the last though. You know, a female in prime condition can draw
twelve hundred times her own weight.”
“Wonderful! And what do they eat?”
“Well,” said O’Flather, thoughtfully, “a performer can go about four
days without eating, but we feed ’em every day. Jinny used to do it.
She loves ’em. But it’s hard on a person. I’ve got a young woman
engaged just now.”
“A young woman!”
“Yep, but she’s a poor weak bit of a thing. I don’t think as she’ll
stick it much longer. You see, there’s lots of folks the little devils
won’t take to--me, for instance. Blood’s too bitter, I guess. They seem
to prefer the women, too. Then again, they feed better if the body’s
hot, specially if the skin’s perspiring.”
“How very interesting!” I said absently. Then suddenly the reason of it
came to me. The insects had no intelligence, no consciously directed
power. The motive that inspired them was--Fear. Their extraordinary
demonstrations were caused by their desperate efforts to escape. It was
fear that drew the coaches and the gun-carriages: fear that made those
kicking on their backs turn the threshing mills; fear in the fight to
free themselves from the stakes to which they were chained that made
the duellists clash their sabres, and the Bathshebas work at their
wells. It was even fear that made those two lashed side by side, and
head to tail, run round in opposite directions to get away from each
other, till they gave the illusion of a waltz. Fear as a motive power!
This exhibition, outwardly so amusing, was really all suffering and
despair, struggle born of fear, pleasure gained at the cost of pain.
Exquisitely ludicrous; yet how like life, how like life!
“Professor O’Flather,” I said gravely, “you have taught me a lesson I
will never forget.”
“Naw,” said the Professor modestly, “it ain’t nuthin’. Hope you get a
few dollars out of it. Mind you give the show a boost.”
We were standing by the doorway of the exhibition when a slim
figure in grey brushed past us and entered. I started, I could not
be mistaken--it was the heroine of my story _The Girl Who Looked
Interesting_.
“Who’s that, Professor--the girl who’s just gone in?”
“That,” said O’Flather, with a shrug, “why, that’s the young woman wot
feeds the fleas.”
CHAPTER IX
THE CHEWING GUM OF DESTINY
Allured by a sign: “A Cut off the Joint for Sixpence,” I lunched in
a little eating-house off Tottenham Court Road. I was at the tapioca
pudding stage of the repast, and in a mood of singular complacency.
“Six weeks have gone,” I pondered. “I have spent nearly a third of
the sum I realised from the sale of Guinivere’s engagement ring. In
my ambition to fail in the world, already I have accomplished much.
Behold! my boots are cracked across the uppers. Regard! the suggestive
glossiness of my coat-sleeves. Observe! the bluey brilliancy of my
celluloid collar. Oh, mighty Mammon, chain me to thine oar! Grind me,
Oppression, ’neath thy ruthless heel! Minions of Monopoly, hound me to
despair!--not all your powers combined in fell intent can so inspire me
with the spirit of Democracy as can the sticky feel of this celluloid
collar around my neck!”
With which sentiment I lit a cigarette, and took from my pocket a copy
of the _Gotham Gazette_. I had seen it looking very foreign and forlorn
in a news-agents, and had bought it out of pity for its loneliness. I
was glancing through it when a name seemed to leap at me, and I felt my
heart stand still. I read:
“Yesterday afternoon patrician Fifth Avenue was the scene of a
saddening incident. It was almost opposite Tiffany’s, and the autos
were passing in a continuous stream. At this time and this place it
is almost as difficult to cross the Rubicon as to cross the Avenue;
yet, taking advantage of a lull in the traffic, a well-dressed
man--who has since been identified as Charles Fitzbarrington, an
ex-army officer resident in Harlem--was observed to make the daring
attempt. Half way over he was seen to stumble, and come to the
ground. Those who saw the rash act held their breaths, and when the
nearest spectators could reach him to rescue him from his perilous
position, they found to their surprise that the man was dead....”
I dropped the paper with a groan. Captain Fitzbarrington dead! Mrs.
Fitz free! My promise to marry her! The terrible twins! Oh, God....
“Alas!” I cried, “I am undone!--betrayed by an incurably romantic
disposition; asphyxiated in the effervescence of my own folly;
ignominiously undone!”
As if it were yesterday, I remembered the faded apartment in Harlem,
my protests of undying devotion, the words that now seemed written in
remorseless flame:
“_If anything should happen to him, if by any chance we should find
ourselves free, send for me, and I’ll come to you, even though the
world lie between us. By my life, by my honour, I swear it._”
Had I really uttered that awful rot? Oh, what a fool I’d been! But it
was too late now. I must make the best of it. Never yet have I gone
back on my word (though I have put some very poetic constructions on
it). But here there was no chance of evasion. She would certainly
expect me to marry her. Farewell, ambitious dreams of struggle and
privation! Farewell, O glorious independent poverty! Farewell, my
schemes and dreams! Bohemia, adventure, all!--and for what? For an
elderly woman for whom I did not care a rap, a faded woman with a
ready-made family to boot. Truly life is one confounded scrape after
another.
That night I dreamed of the terrible twins. I was a pirate ship,
Ronnie, the captain, stood on my chest, while Lonnie, a naval
lieutenant, tried to board me. Then they invented a new game, based on
the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. It was tremendously exciting. They
both got quite worked up over it. So did I--only more so. I was the
horse. I awoke, bathed in perspiration, and hissing through my clenched
teeth: “Never! Never!”
But really it seemed as if I must do something; so next day I began
three different letters to Mrs. Fitz. I was sorely distracted. My work
was suffering. There was the unfinished manuscript of _The Microbe_
staring reproachfully at me. Then to crown all, just as I was sitting
down in the early evening with grim determination to finish the letter,
suddenly I was assailed by a Craving.
Indulgent Reader, up till now I have concealed it, but I must confess
at last. I have one besetting weakness, a weakness that amounts to a
vice. I am ashamed of it. Often I have tried to wean myself of it;
often cursed the heredity that imposed it on me. Opium? Morphine?
Cocaine? Nothing so fashionable. Absinthe? Brandy? Gin? Nothing so
normal. Alas! let me whisper it in your ear: I am a Chewing Gum Fiend!
So feeling in my pocket for the stuff, and finding none, I straightway
began to crave it as never before. Then, knowing there would be no
peace for me, I left my letter and started desperately forth into that
fog stifled city.
And that fog was now a FOG. It irked the lungs, and made the eye-balls
tingle. Each street lamp was a sulphurous blur, each radiant
shop-window a furtive blotch of light. It seemed something solid,
something you could cut into slices, and serve between bread--a very
Camembert cheese of a fog.
So into this woolly obscurity I plunged, and like a Mackinaw blanket it
entangled me about. Bleary boxes of light the tramways crawled along.
There were tootings of taxis, curses of cabbies, clanging of bells.
The streets were lanes of mystery, the passers weird shadows; the
shop-windows seemed to be made of horn instead of glass. Then the green
and red lights of a chemist’s semaphored me, seemingly from a great
distance, but really from just a few feet away. So there I bought six
packets of chewing gum, and started home.
But at this point I found the fog fuzzier than ever. I stumbled and
fumbled, and wondered and blundered, till presently I found myself
standing before the great doors of a theatre. For the moment I was too
discouraged to go further, and the performance was about to begin. Ha!
that _was_ an idea! I would enter. Then I groaned in spirit, for I saw
that the theatre was Drury Lane. Sensational melodrama! Ah, no! Better
the cold and cruel street. But the fog was inexorable. Three times
did I try to break through it; three times did it hurl me back on the
melodramatic mercies of Drury Lane.
Hanging over the front of the gallery, I asked myself: “Who are
these hundreds of well-dressed people who fill this great playhouse?
To all appearance they are intelligent beings, yet I cannot imagine
intelligent beings taking this kind of thing seriously. As burlesque
it’s funny, and the more thrilling it gets the funnier it is. Yet,
except myself, no one seems to laugh. How the author must have chuckled
over his fabrication! However, let me credit him with one haunting
line, one memorable sentiment, delivered by the heroine to a roar of
applause:
“A woman’s most precious jewel is her good name,
And her brightest crown the love of her husband!”
Then suddenly a light flashed on me. It was these people who bought
my books; it was this sort of thing I had been peddling to them so
long. And they liked it. How they howled for more! “O ye gods of High
Endeavour!” I groaned, “heap not my sins of melodrama on my head.”
Conscience-stricken I did not wait for the climax where two airships
grapple in the sky, under the guns of a “Dreadnought,” while at a
crossing an auto dashes into a night express. I sneaked out between the
acts, and sought the solitude of the Thames Embankment.
The fog had cleared now, and the clock of St. Stephen’s pealed till
I counted the stroke of midnight. The wall of the Embankment was a
barrier of grime, the river a thing of mystery and mud. It was a
gruesome night. Even the huge electrically-limned Highlandman on the
opposite shore, who drinks whiskey with such enviable capacity, had
ceased for the nonce his luminous libations.
A few human waifs shuffled past me, middle-aged men with faces pale
as dough, and discouraged moustaches drooping over negligible chins.
Their clothes, green with age and corroded with mud, seemed to flap
emptily on their meagre frames. A woman separated herself from a mass
of shadow, a miry-skirted scarecrow crowned with a broken bonnet. With
one red claw she clutched a precious box of matches.
“For Gord’s syke buy it orf me, mister. I ain’t myde tupp’nce oipney
orl dye.”
I left her staring at a silver coin and testing it with her teeth.
Yes, it was a bad night to be out in, a bad night to cower on these
bitter benches waiting for the dawn. Yet I myself was conscious of the
_chauffage central_ of peripatetic philanthropy. Greedily I panted for
other opportunities to enjoy the glow of giving. Then, as I was passing
Cleopatra’s Needle, I heard the sound of a woman’s sob.
It came from the gloomy gruesomeness between the Needle and the Thames.
I peered and listened. Below me the hideous river chuckled, and the
lamplight fell lividly on the whiteness of a lifebuoy bound to the
wall. Again I was sure I heard that sound of piteous sobbing.
Bravery is often a lack of imagination: I have imagination plus, so I
hesitated. I had heard of men being lured into traps. Vividly enough I
saw myself a cadaver drifting on the tide, and I liked not the picture.
Yet after all it takes tremendous courage to be a coward, so I drew
nearer. Strange! the sobbing, so low, so pitiful, had ceased. It was
followed by a silence far more sinister. There was a vibrating agony in
that silence, a horrible, heart-clutching suspense. What if I were to
go down there and find--no one? Yet some one had been, I would swear;
some one had sobbed, and now--silence.
Slowly, slowly I descended the steps. There in the black shadow of the
Needle I made little noise, yet--suddenly I began to wonder if all the
world could not hear the beating of my heart....
Heart be still! hand be steady! foot be swift! There, crouching on the
top of the wall, gazing downward, ready for the leap, I see the figure
of a woman. Will she jump before I can reach her? I hold my breath.
Nearer I steal, nearer, nearer. Then--one swift rush--ah! I have her.
Even as I clutched I felt her weight sag towards the river. Another
moment and I had dragged her back into safety. Tense and panting,
I stared at her; then, as the lamplight fell on her ghastly face I
uttered a cry of amazement. Heavens above! it was the girl of the
entomological meal-ticket, the persistent pedestrian of Tavistock
Square.
There she cowered, looking at me with great, terror dilated eyes. There
I glowered, regarding her grimly enough. At last I broke the silence.
“Child! Child! why did you do it? You’ve gone and spoilt my story. I
should never have met you like this. It’s coincidence. Coincidence, you
know, can’t happen in fiction, only in real life. You can’t be fiction
now. You’ll have to be real life.”
She gazed at me blankly. Against the green of the wall her face was a
vague splash of white.
“But that is a matter with which I can scarcely reproach you. What I
would like to know is why were you on the top of that wall? Having
severely strained my right arm, I conceive I am entitled to an
explanation.”
She did not make an effort to supply one, so after a pause I continued:
“No doubt you will say it was because you were tired, hungry, homeless.
Because you thought the river kinder than the cruel world. Because you
said: ‘Death is better than dishonour!’”
The girl nodded vaguely.
“Ah no!” I said sadly; “you must not say these things, for if you
do you will be quoting word for word the heroine of my novel _A
Shirtmaker’s Romance_. You will be guilty of plagiarism, my child; and
what’s worse, a thousand times worse, you will be guilty of melodrama.”
She looked at me as if she thought me mad, then a shudder convulsed
her, and breaking away, she dashed down the steps to that black water.
Just in time I caught her and dragged her back. She shrank against the
wall, hiding her face, sobbing violently.
“Please don’t,” I entreated. “If you want to give me a chance of doing
the rescuing hero business choose a less repellent evening, and water
not so like an animated cesspool. Now, listen to me.”
Her sobbing ceased. She was a silent huddle of black against the wall.
“I am,” I said, “a waif like yourself, homeless, hungry, desperate. I
came to this city to win fame and fortune. Poor dreaming fool! Little
did I know that where one wins a thousand fail. Well, I’ve struggled,
starved even as you’ve done; but I’ve made up my mind to suffer no
more. And so to-night I’ve come down here, even as you’ve done, to end
it all.”
I had her listening now. From the white mask of her face her big eyes
devoured me.
“Yes, my poor girl,” I went on wearily, “you’re right. Life for such
as us is better ended. Defeated, desperate, what is there left for us
but death? Let us then die together; but not your way--no, that’s too
primitive. I have another, more fascinating, more original. Ah! even
in self-destruction, behold in me the artist. And I am going to allow
you to share my doom. Nay! do not trouble to express your gratitude.
I understand; it’s too deep for words. And now, just excuse me one
moment: I will prepare.”
With that I went over to the base of the Needle and taking from my
pocket the five remaining packets of chewing gum, I tore the paper from
them. Then with the large piece I had been masticating, I welded them
into a solid stick about six inches long. Eagerly I returned to her.
“There!” I cried triumphantly. “Do you know what this grey stick is?
But why should you? Well, let me tell you. This dull, sugary-looking
stuff is _dynamite_, dynamite in its most concentrated form. This is a
stick of the terrific PEPSINITE. It has moved more than any explosive
known. Now do you understand?”
Her eyes were rivetted on the little grey stick.
“Ah, well may you shudder, girl! There’s enough in this tiny piece
to blow a score of us to atoms, to bring this mighty monument
careening down, to make the embankment look like an excavation for the
underground railway. Oh, is it not glorious? Pepsinite!”
Still looking at it as if fascinated, she made a movement of utter
alarm.
“Just think of it,” I whispered gloatingly; “in two more minutes we
shall be launched into eternity. Does that not thrill you with rapture?
And think of our revenge! Here with our death we will destroy their
monument, hard as their hearts, black as their selfishness, sharp as
their scorn. It, too, will be blown to pieces.”
She looked up at the black column almost as if she were sorry for it. I
laughed harshly.
“Yes, I know. You do not hate the Needle, but just think of the people
who are so proud of it, the devils who have goaded us to this. At first
I thought that with my death I would destroy their Albert Memorial, and
so break their philistine hearts. But that would have taken so much
pepsinite, and I have only this pitiful piece. So it had to be the
Needle.”
Again she seemed almost to regret its impending doom.
“And now,” I cried, “the time has come. Oh, curse you, curse you, vast
vain-glorious city! Under the Upas window of your smoke what dreams
have withered, what idols turned to clay! How many hearts of splendid
pride have failed and fallen! How many poets cursed thy publishers and
died! Oh heedless, heartless London!”
With a gesture full of noble scorn I shook my fist in the direction of
the Savoy Hotel. Then I changed to another key.
“But no, let me not curse you, great city! Here at the gateway of
death let me envisage you again, and from the depths of the heart you
have broken say to you sadly: ‘London, ruthless, splendid London, I
forgive!’”
My hand quivered as I laid the grey stick at the base of the monument;
my hand trembled as I planted a large wax match in it; my hand
positively shook as I struck another match and applied a light to the
upright one. With eyes dilated I stared at the tiny flickering flame,
and at that moment, so worked up was I, I will swear I thought I was
looking at the very flame of death.
“Come closer, closer girl,” I gasped. “See it burning down, down.
Soon it will reach the end and we will know nothing. Oh is it not
glorious--nothing! Good-bye world, good-bye life ... see! it is nearly
half way. Oh gracious flame, burn faster, faster yet! And now, girl,
standing here in the shadow of death do not refuse my last request; let
me kiss you once, just once upon your brow.”
For answer she stooped swiftly and blew out the match.
CHAPTER X
THE YOUNG MAN WHO MAKES GOOD
“Why did you do it?” I demanded angrily. “Why couldn’t we have gone
through with it?”
Then for the first time the girl seemed to find her voice, and it was a
very faint voice indeed.
“No, no, I could not. For myself it does not mattaire; but you,
monsieur--that’s different.”
Again I was struck with her foreign intonation, her pretty precision
with which Frenchwomen speak English, the deliberate utterance due to
an effort, not wholly successful, to avoid zeeing and zizzing.
“Why is it so different?” I asked sulkily.
“Because--because me, I am nossing. If I die no persons will care; but
you, monsieur, you are artist, you are poet. You have many beautiful
sings to do in the life. Ah, monsieur! have courage, courage. Promise
me you nevaire do it some more.”
“All right,” I said gloomily; “I promise.”
She seemed reassured. Her child’s face as she looked at me was full of
pity and sympathy.
“And now,” I said, “what’s to be done?”
“I do not know.”
She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. All at once a look of terror
came into her face. Fearfully she peered over my shoulder, then she
cowered back in the shadow of the wall.
“Oh, I’m ’fraid, I’m ’fraid.”
Involuntarily I turned in the direction of her stare, but saw no one.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked. “What’s the trouble?”
“It’s Monsieur O’Flazzaire! Oh, I am bad, bad girls! Why you not let me
die? I have keel, I have keel.”
“Good Heavens! you haven’t killed Professor O’Flather?”
“No, no, but I have keel ze troupe; Batsheba, all, all; dead, keel by
my hand, keel in revenge. Oh I am so wicked! I hate myself.”
I stared at her. “In the name of Heaven, what have you done?”
For answer she pulled from the pocket of her mantle a tin canister of
fair size and handed it to me. By the lamplight I could just make out
the label:
SKEETER’S INSECT POWDER.
A light dawned on me. “You don’t mean to say you’ve fed ’em on this?”
“Yes, yes, all of eet. I have spare nossing. I was mad. Oh I ’ate heem
so! And now I’m ’fraid. If he finds me he will keel me, certainly. He’s
bad man. Oh don’t let heem find me!”
She clutched my arm in her terror.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “But first, let’s destroy the evidence of
your crime.”
I flung the canister into the river, where we heard a faint splash.
“Now,” I went on, “you’re no doubt cold and hungry. Let me take you to
the coffee-stall on the Embankment and give you some supper. Then,
according to the custom of the situation, you may tell me the sad story
of your life. In the meantime, as we walk there, let’s hear how you
fixed O’Flather.”
“It is true, what I tell you, Monsieur; he’s very, very bad man. He
’ave said the things disgusting to me, and he try to make me have
dinner wiz heem many hevenings, but I say: No! No! Because, truly, I
have ’orror for such mans. Den last night he tell me if I don’ come
wiz heem, he don’ want me some more. He refuse pay me my money, and
the lady where I rest tell me: ‘You don’t come back some more wiz no
money.’ So what I must do? I have no ’ome, and just one sheeling of
money. Ah, no! It was not interesting for me, truly.”
She shook her head with all the painful resignation of the poor.
“Well, I am desperate. I sink it is all finish for me, I must drink
of the gran’ cup at last. That make me sad, because I have fight so
long. But there! it is the life, is it not? Then I sink I have one
gran’ revenge. I buy wiz my sheeling dat powdaire, and I go to the
exposition. There was only the Japonaise girl, and she leave me wiz
the troupe. They lie on their backs and they wait for dejeuner. Well,
I geeve them such as I don’ sink they want eat ever again. Oh, I ’ate
them so, and I ’ate heem so, and so I keel them every one wiz that
powdaire, till zere legs don’ wave some more. Even ze wild ones, they
don’ jump some more now.”
“Poor Bathsheba!”
“Then when I finish keel the last one the Japonaise girl come and
scream for the patron, and I run like wind. But I know he fetch
everywhere for me, and when he find me he keel me too. Anyway, I was
tire, and I dispair, so I sink I throw myself in the water. There!”
“Well, you must swear you won’t do it again.”
“Yes, I swear on the head of my fazzaire, I won’t do it again.”
“And now for that coffee, coffee and sandwiches--ham sandwiches.”
She ate and drank eagerly, yet always with that furtive, hunted look,
as if she expected to see the huge bull-dog face of O’Flather with
its mane of brindled hair come snarling out of the gloom. I saw, too,
that she was regarding me with great interest and curiosity, indeed
with a certain maternal and protecting air, odd in one so childish and
clinging herself. Once, seeing that I shivered a little, she turned
up the collar of my coat and buttoned it. In spite of the mothering
gentleness of the act I might have thought it a little “forward,” had I
not remembered that in her eyes we were comrades in misfortune.
Her eyes! How blue and bright they were now, as they regarded me over
her coffee! And how long, I wondered, had that wistful mouth been a
stranger to smiles?
“Let me see you smile,” I begged.
I thought so. A flash of teeth that made me think of an advertising
poster for a popular dentifrice. Again I noted the darkness of her
hair, setting off the porcelain whiteness of her skin. Again I approved
of the full forehead, and the frank eyebrows. Again the girl stirred
me strangely. And to think that she might have been at the bottom of
that hideous river by now! I felt a sudden pity for her, and a wish to
shield her from further ill.
“And now for the story,” I said, as she finished. “I have told you
mine, you know.”
“Ah, mine! It is not so interesting. There is not much to tell. My
fazzaire die when I was leetle girl, and I go to the convent. There I
learn to do the _hem-broderie_, and when I leave the Sisters I work in
atalier in Paris. It was so hard. We work from eight by the morning
till seven at night. There was t’irty girl all in one leetle room, and
some girls was _poitrinaire_.”
“What’s that?”
“Ah ... what you call it--yes, consumption. Well, I begin to become
that no more can I stand it, so I come to Londres and try to get work.
Every day I try so ’ard for one month, for I can speak English not
much. Then just as I have no money left I get work in atalier at the
_hem-broderie_. It was not so ’ard as in Paris, and I was very ’appy.
But pretty soon I am seek, and it is necessaire I go to the hospital.
It was the appendicite. When I get out I try to get back to the
atalier, but my place have been fill. No work, no money--truly, I have
no chance.”
“Well, what happened then?”
“Ah! then it was not interesting. I often go very hungry. I live for
many days on bread, just bread. But by and by I get more work. Then
again I am very ’appy. But I have no chance. I become seek once more. I
have headache very much; my hair tumble out, and every night I cry. But
I try very ’ard. I must keep my work, I must, I must. Then the doctor
tell me I must have more air. I must _respire_. I tell him it is not
for the poor to _respire_, and he say you must do something outside,
or you will die. Well, I leave the atalier and for two months I fetch
somesing outside. But I have no chance. Once more my money is finish,
then one day I get work with Monsieur O’Flazzaire. I would not have
taken it, but that I am starve, and I am ’fraid. It was so ’ard, and
every day I get more weak. Then, yesterday, he tell me: ‘Go! I don’ pay
you,’--and I don’ care for myself any more.”
“Why,” I said gravely, looking her in the face, “did you not do as
others would have done?”
She stared at me in a startled way:
“You do not mean dishonour, monsieur. Ah no! You cannot mean that.”
“Is it not better to do that than starve?”
“It is better to die than to do that, I sink. I am good Catholic,
Monsieur.”
“Do not call me Monsieur! Are we not fellow waifs? So you think it is
less sin to take your own life than to sell your honour?”
“It is that that I think, Monsieur.”
As I looked into the steady, blue eyes I saw a look of faith that
almost amounted to fanaticism, a sort of Joan of Arc look. “How
curious!” I thought. “I was under the impression such sentiments were
confined to books.” However, I determined to fall back on cynicism,
and to seem the more cynical I lit a cigarette. She watched me with a
curious intensity; and as she stood there quietly, a naphtha lamp lit
up her pale, earnest face.
“Ah! young lady,” I remarked mockingly, “you speak like a penny
novelette. In fact, you say the same thing as did my heroine Monica
Klein in _A Shirtmaker’s Romance_. It only remains for you to die to
slow music in the snow outside the door of a fashionable church. That’s
what happened to Monica. I shed a bucket of tears as I wrote that
scene. But I thought we had decided you were to be Fact not Fiction?”
“I do not understand, Monsieur.”
“Then let me explain. Idealism is a luxury we poor people can’t afford.
If you should be forced into dishonour for bread, lives there a man
that would dare blame you? To me you would be as good as the purest
woman, even though you walk the streets. Nay! I’m not sure that you
wouldn’t be better, because you would be a victim, a sacrifice, a
martyr. No, you’re wrong, mademoiselle. I think you’re wrong.”
“It is easy to die; it must be ’ard to live like zat.”
“How lucky you find it so easy to die. Me, I’d rather be a live lackey
than a dead demi-god. But let me tell you you won’t get much credit
in this world for dying in the cause of virtue, and I have my doubts
about the next. And it doesn’t seem to me to make much odds whether you
die quickly, as you intended doing a little while ago, or whether you
die slowly by hard work and poor living. Society’s going to do for you
anyway. You’re Waste, that’s what you are. In every process there must
be waste, even in the civilising one. You’re going to be swept into the
rubbish heap pretty soon. Poor pitiful Waste! What do you mean to do
now?”
Her face fell sullenly. She would not look at me any more, but she
answered bravely enough.
“Me! Oh, I suppose I try again. Perhaps I starve. Perhaps I find work.
Anyway, I fight.”
“What chance have you got--a poor physique, hard toil, bad air, cheap
food. You’ll go on fighting till you fall, then no one will care. If
it’s fighting you’re after, why don’t you fight Society, fight with
your women’s weapons, your allure, your appeal to the worst in man.
You can do it. Any woman can if she’s determined and forgets certain
scruples. Do as I would in your case, as many men would if they had the
cursed ill-luck to be women. Then, when you’re sixty you can turn round
and have a pew in church, instead of rotting at thirty in Potter’s
Field.”
“You advice me like zat?” I could feel that she shrank from me.
“Doesn’t it seem good, practical advice?”
“Suppose no one want me?”
“True. There’s many a woman guarding ever so jealously a jewel no
man wants to steal. That’s almost more bitter than having it stolen.
However, don’t you worry about that, there’s no need to.”
She raised her head which had been down-hung. Intently, oddly she
looked at me.
“Will you take me?” she said suddenly.
“Me!” I laughed. “Why no! I’m speaking as one wastrel to another. How
could I?”
“Would you if you could?”
“Well, er--I don’t think so. You see--I’m not that sort.”
“No, I knew you were not,” she said slowly; “you’re good man.”
“I’m not,” I protested indignantly. How one hates to be called
“good”--especially if one is a woman.
“Yes, you are,” she insisted. Then she threw back her head with a
certain fine pride, and the dark sea-blue eyes were unfathomable.
“You have saved my life. It is yours now. Will you not take me? I am
good girl. I have always been serious, I have always been virtuous. I
will work hard for you. I will help you while you are so poor; zen if
one day you are become rich, famous, and you are tire of me, I will go
away.”
I was taken aback. If there’s one thing worse than to be convicted of
vice it’s to be convicted of virtue. I squirmed, stammered, shuffled.
“Well, you see I-- Hang it all! somewhere in my make-up there’s that
uncomfortable possession, a Puritan conscience. I’m sorry--let me
consider.... Perhaps there’s another way.”
How terrible to a woman to have the best she has to offer refused; but
the girl bore up bravely.
“What is it?” she asked, without any particular interest.
I was doing some rapid thinking. An idea had come into my head which
startled me. It was an inspiration, a solution of a pressing problem.
Swiftly I decided.
“To do as you suggest,” I said, “would be very wrong, and what’s worse,
it would be crudely conventional. It is commonplace now in some society
to live with a person without marrying them; the original thing’s to
marry them. Well, will you marry me?”
She looked at me incredulously. I went on calmly.
“But for me, as you say, your troubles would by now have been over.
In a way I’m responsible for your life. What’s to be done? I’m not
old enough to adopt you, and to constitute myself your guardian would
lay me open to uncharitable suspicion. From now on I know I shall
be infernally worried about you. Well, the easiest way out of the
difficulty seems to be to marry you, doesn’t it?”
“But you don’t know me,” she gasped.
“You’ve got ‘nothing on me’ there,” I said airily; “you don’t know me.
That’s precisely what makes it so interesting. Any man can marry a
woman he knows; it takes an original to marry one he doesn’t. But after
all, has not the method some merit? We start with no illusions. There
will be no eye-opening process, no finding our swans geese. The beauty
of such a marriage is that we don’t entirely ring down the curtain on
romance.”
“But--I have no money.”
“Neither have I. What does that matter? Any fool can marry if he’s got
money; it takes a brave man to do it if he’s broke.”
“But--”
“Not another word. It’s all settled. I think it’s a splendid idea.
We’ll be married to-morrow if possible. I’ll get a licence at once.
By the way, what’s your name? It’s of no consequence, you know, but I
fancy it’s necessary for the licence.”
“Anastasia Guinoval.”
“Thank you. Now I’ll take you to where you live, and you must accept
a little money to satisfy your landlady. To-morrow I’ll call for you.
Hold on a minute--as we’re affianced, seems to me we ought to kiss?”
“I--don’t know.”
“Yes, I believe it’s customary.” I pecked at her lightly in the dark.
“Now, you understand we’re making a real sensible marriage, without
any sentimental nonsense about it. You understand I’m not a sentimental
man. I hate sentiment.”
“I understand,” she said doubtfully.
As we moved away, up there in the dark that great sonorous bell boomed
the stroke of one. Only an hour, yet how busy had the fates been on my
particular account! In what ludicrous ways had they worked out their
design! On what trivial things does destiny seem to hinge! Ah! who
shall say what is trivial?
On reaching my room my first act was to take up my half-finished letter
to Mrs. Fitz. I read the words: “If ever we should find ourselves free
to marry, you promised you would send for me.”
“Good!” I cried exultantly. “She will find herself free to marry all
right, but I won’t; that is, I hope I won’t after to-morrow. Whoever
could have guessed the motive behind my apparently rash proposal. To
avoid one marriage I stake my chances on another. Well, that settles
things as far as Mrs. Fitz is concerned. Ronnie and Lonnie, I defy you.”
So I tore my letter into small pieces with a vast satisfaction, and I
was proceeding to tear also the luckless copy of the _Gotham Gazette_
when I paused. I had not noticed that the fateful paragraph, begun near
the bottom of a page, was continued on the next. Again I read:
“... when the nearest spectators could reach him to rescue him from
his perilous position they found to their surprise that the man was
dead....”
Quickly I turned over the page; then I gave a gasp, for this was the
continuation:
“... to the world. The gallant captain had been imbibing not wisely
but too well, and when aroused after some difficulty, claimed that
he had a right to sleep there if he chose. It was only after much
argument and resistance that he was finally persuaded to accompany an
officer to the police station.”
“Of all the--”
Words failed me at this point. I plumped down on my chair and sat as
if paralysed. And after all the captain was not dead--only dead drunk,
and my brilliant effort to avoid marrying his widow had been entirely
unnecessary. Then after all I was a fool.
Well, it was too late to find it out. At least I never went back on my
word. I must go through with the other business.
“Anastasia Guinoval! Hum! maybe it’ll turn out all right. Time will
show. Anyway--it will be a good chance to learn French.”
And with this comforting reflection I went to bed.
END OF BOOK I
BOOK II--THE STRUGGLE
CHAPTER I
THE NEWLY-WEDS
It was nearly a week before I recovered from the surprise of my sudden
marriage.
As far as the actual ceremony went it seemed as if I were the person
least concerned. One, James Horace Madden, was tying himself in the
most awkward manner to a member of the opposite sex, a slight, pale,
neatly-dressed girl whose lucent blue eyes were already beginning to
regard him with positive adoration. The said James Horace Madden, a
tall, absent-minded young man, stared about him continually. He was,
indeed, more like a curious and amused spectator than a principal
in the affair, and it was nearly over before he decided to become
interested in it.
Well, I was married, so they told me, as they shook my hand; and I
had a wife, so she assured me as she clung lightly to my arm. She
seemed extravagantly happy. When I saw she was so happy I was glad
I had married her. To tell the truth, I had almost backed out. The
inconsiderateness of Captain Fitzbarrington in not dying had hurt my
feelings and aroused in me a resentment against Fate. In the end,
however, good nature prevailed. I believe I am good-natured enough to
marry a dozen women should occasion demand.
We had not been wed five minutes before Anastasia developed an
extraordinary capacity, for unreserved affection. I have never been
capable of unreserved affection, not even for myself; but I can
appreciate it in others, particularly if I am the object of it. She
also developed such a morbid fear of the infuriate O’Flather that on my
suggesting we spend our honeymoon in Paris her enthusiasm was almost
grotesque. When we arrived at the Gare du Nord I believe she could have
knelt down and kissed the very stones.
And to tell the truth my own delight was hardly less restrained.
There’s only one mood in which to approach Paris--Rhapsody. So for
ten marvellous days I rhapsodised. The fact that I was on a honeymoon
seemed trivial compared with my presence in the most adorable of
cities. Truly my bride had reason to be jealous of this Paris, and,
as she was given that way, doubtless she would have been had not she
herself loved so well.
But there was another matter to distract me: had I not a new part to
play? As a young married man it behooved me, in the first place, to
acquire a certain seriousness and weight. After due reflexion I decided
to give up the flippant cigarette and take to the more dignified pipe.
So I made myself a present of a splendid meerschaum, and getting
Anastasia to encase the bowl in a flannel jacket I began to colour it.
Imagine me, then, on a certain snappy morning of late December, nursing
my flannel-clad meerschaum as I swing jauntily along the Quai des
Tournelles. Seasonable weather! the brilliant sunshine playing on the
Seine with all the glitter of cutlery: beyond the splendid stride
of steel between the two Iles, the Hôtel de Ville: to the left the
hideous Morgue; beyond that, again, the grey glory of Notre Dame, its
bone-blanched buttresses like the ribs of some uncouth monster, its two
blunt towers like timeworn horns, its gargoyles etched in ebon black
against the sky.
“After all,” I am reflecting, “the advantages of marrying a person one
does not know are sufficiently obvious. Then there is no bitterness of
disillusionment, no chagrin of being found out. What woman can continue
to idealise an unshaven man in pyjamas? What man can persist in adoring
a female in a peignoir with her hair concentrated into knots? In good
truth we never marry the person with whom we go through the wedding
ceremony: it’s always some one else.”
Here I pause to stare appreciatively at the Fontaine St. Michel, amid
whose icicles the sunbeams play at hide-and-seek. Then I watch the
steam of a tug which the sunshine tangles in fleeces of gold amid the
bare branches of a marronnier; after which in the same zestful way I
regard a hearty man on a sand-barge toasting some beef on a sharpened
stick over a fire. Suddenly these humble things seem to become alive
with interest for me.
“Yes,” I continue, “love is an intoxicant, marriage the most effective
of soberers. It is a part of life’s discipline, a bachelor’s punishment
for his sins, a life-long argument in which one is wise to choose an
opponent one can out-voice. How the fictitious values of courtship are
discounted in the mart of matrimony! It makes philosophers of us all.
Having been a benedict three weeks, of course I know everything about
it.”
The long slate-grey façade of the Louvre is sun-radiant, and like a
point of admiration rears the Tower St. Jacques. Looking down the
shining river the arches of the many bridges interlock like lacework,
and like needles the little steamers dart gleaming through. The
graceful river and the gleaming quays laugh in the sunshine, and as I
look at them my heart laughs too.
“But,” I go on musingly, “to marry some one you don’t know, some one
who has never inspired you with mad dreams, never lived for you in the
glamour of romance: surely that is ideal. You have no illusions; her
virtues as well as her faults are all to discover. Take my own case.
So far, I haven’t discovered a single fault. My wife adores me. She
can scarcely bear me out of her sight. Even now I know she’s anxiously
awaiting my return; imagines I may have been run over by a taxi, and
then arrested by a policeman for getting in its way. Or else I have a
_maîtresse_. Frequently she shows signs of jealousy, and I’ve been away
over an hour. Really I must hurry home to reassure her.”
With that I pass under the arch of the Institute, and turn up the rue
de Seine. I glance with eager interest at the gorgelike rue Visconti; I
itch to turn over the folios before the doors of the art dealers, but
on I go stubbornly till I come to a doorway bearing the sign:
HÔTEL DU MONDE ET DU MOZAMBIQUE.
A certain tenebrous suggestion in the vestibule seems to account for
the latter part of the title. It is a tall, decrepit building that
at some time had been sandwiched between two others of more stalwart
bearing who now support it. It consists chiefly of a winding stairway
lit by lamps of oil. At every stage two rooms seem to happen; but they
are so small as to appear accidental.
So up this precipitous stairway lightly I leap till I come to the third
storey. There before a yellow door I knock three times.
“Come in!” cries a joyful voice, and I enter to find two soft arms
around my neck, and two soft lips upheld expectantly.
“Hullo, Little Thing,” I shout cheerily.
“Oh, darleen, why you not come before? You affright me. I sink you have
haxident, and I am anxieuse.”
“No, no, I’ve only been gone an hour. I’ve had several narrow escapes,
though. Nearly got blown into the Seine, was attacked by an Apache in
the Avenue de l’Opera, and, stepping off the pavement to avoid going
under a ladder, was knocked down by a taxi. But no bones broken; got
home at last.”
“Ah! you laugh; but me, I wait here and I sink all the time you was
keel. Oh, darleen! if you was keel I die too.”
“Nonsense! You’d make rather a jolly little widow. Well, what else have
you been doing, besides worrying about me?”
“Oh, I make blouse. I sink it will be very pretty. You will see.”
“All right, we’ll put it on and go to the opera to-night.”
The “opera” is a cinema house near the Place St. Michel, where we go on
rainy evenings, usually in our oldest clothes, and joking merrily about
opera cloaks and evening dress.
“See! Isn’t it nice?”
She holds up a shimmering sketch in silk and pins. “It’s the chiffon
you geeve me. But you must not spend your money like that. You spoil
me.”
“Not at all. But talking about money reminds me: I got my English gold
changed to-day. Now, let’s form a committee of ways and means. Here is
all that lies between you and me and the wolf.”
I throw a wad of flimsy French bills on the table.
“A thousand francs! Now that’s got to last us till some Editor realises
that certain gems of literature signed ‘Silenus Starset’ are worth real
money.”
“Oh, they are loovely, darleen, your writings. No one will refuse
articles so beautiful.”
“My dear, you can’t conceive the intensity of editorial obfustication.
I fear we’ve got to retrench. You must make the ‘economies.’”
“Yes, yes, that is easy for me. I know nussing but make the economies.
You see it is the chance often if I have anysing to make the economies
on.”
“Good! Well, the first thing is to get out of this hotel. We can’t
afford palatial luxury at five francs a day.”
And here I look with some distaste at the best bedroom the Hôtel du
Monde et du Mozambique affords. I see a fat, high bed of varnished
pine, on which reposes a bloated crimson quilt. On the mantelpiece a
glass bell enshrines a clock of gilt and chocolate-coloured marble.
There is a paunchy, inhospitable chair of green plush, and two of
apologetic cane. An oval table is covered by a fringed cloth of crimson
velour, and there is a mirror in two sections, which, by an ingenious
system of distortion immediately makes one hate oneself--one either
looks mentally abnormal, or about as intelligent as a caveman.
“In truth,” I observe, “the decorative scheme of our apartment puzzles
me. Whether it is Empire or Louis Quinze I cannot decide. Really, we
must seek something less complex.”
She looks at the money thoughtfully. “We might take a _logement_.
Already have I think of it. To-day I have ask Madame who keep the
hotel, and she tell me zere is one very near--rue Mazarin. The rent is
five hundred by year. Perhaps it is too much,” she adds timidly.
“No, I think we might allow that. We pay three months in advance, I
suppose. Allow other three hundred francs for furnishing--do you think
we could manage on that?”
She looks doubtful. “Not very nice; but we will do for the best. I will
be so careful.”
“Oh, we’ll arrange somehow. We’ll then have five hundred francs for
food and other things. We must make that last for three months. By that
time I’m sure to be making something out of my writings. Five hundred
francs for two people for three months isn’t much, is it?”
“No, but we will take very much care, darleen. I do not care for
myself; it is only for you.”
“Don’t lose any sleep over me. I’ll be all right if you will. It will
be real fun scheming and dreaming, and making the best of everything.
We’ll see how much happiness we can squeeze out of every little sou;
we’ll get to know the joys and sorrows of the poor. They say that
Bohemia is vanished; but we’ll prove that wherever there is striving
and the happy heart in spite of need, wherever there is devotion to
art in the face of poverty, there eternally is Bohemia. Hurrah! how
splendid to be young and poor and to have our dreams!”
I laugh exultantly, and the girl enters into my joyous mood.
“Yes,” she says, “we shall be gay. As for me, I will buy a _métier_. I
will work at my _hem-broderie_. I will make leetle money like that. Oh,
not much, but it will assist. So we will be all right.”
“Yes,” I cry, enamoured of the vision. “And when success does come, how
we will glory in it! How good will seem the feast after the fast! Ah!
but sometimes, when we have our house near the Bois, will we not look
back with regret to the days when we struggled and rejoiced there in
our tiny Mansard of Dreams?”
I pause for a moment, while my kinematographic imagination begins to
work. I go on dramatically:
“Then some day of December twilight, when the snow is falling, I will
steal away from the flunkies and the marble halls, and go down to look
at the old windows now so blind and dead. And as I stand wrapped in
mournful reverie and a five hundred franc overcoat, suddenly I hear a
soft step. There in the dusk I am aware of a shadowy form also gazing
up at the poor old windows. Lo! it is you, and there are tears in your
eyes. You too have slipped away from the marble halls to sentimentalise
over the old home. Then we embrace, and, calling the limousine, whirl
off to dinner at the Café de la Paix.... But that reminds me--let’s go
to _déjeûner_. Where shall it be--_chez_ Voisin, Foyet, or Laperouse?”
It turns out to be at the sign of the Golden Snail in the neighbourhood
of the Markets, where for one franc seventy-five we have an elaborate
choice of _hors-de-œuvres_, some meat that we strongly suspect to be
horse, big white beans, a bludgeon of highly-glazed bread, a wedge of
mould-sheathed Camembert (which she eats with joy, but which I cannot
be induced to touch), and some purple wine that puts my teeth on edge.
Yet, as I sit there with a large damp napkin on my knee and my feet in
the saw-dust of the floor, I am superlatively happy.
“It is very extravagant,” I say, as I recklessly order coffee. “You
know there are places where we can have _déjeûner_ for one franc fifty,
or even for one franc twenty-five. Just think of it! We might have
saved a whole franc on this meal.”
“We save much more than that, when we have _ménage_. It will cost so
little then. You will see.”
“Will it really? Come on, then, and let’s have a look at your
apartment. It may be taken just ten minutes before we get there. They
always are.”
Off we go as eager as children, and with rising excitement we reach
the mouldering rue Mazarin. We reconnoitre a gloomy-looking building
entered by a massive, iron-studded door. Through a tunnel-like
porch-way we see a tiny court in the centre of which is a railed space
about six feet square. Within it stand a few pots of dead geraniums and
a weather-stained plaster-cast of Bellona, thus achieving an atmosphere
of both nature and art.
The corpulent concierge emerges from her cubby-hole.-- Yes, she will
show us the apartment. There has been a Monsieur to see it that very
morning. He has been undecided whether to take it or not, but will let
her know in the morning.
This makes us keen to secure it, and it is almost with a determination
to be pleased that we mount five flights of dingy stairs. A faded
carpet accompanies us as far as the fourth flight, then deserts us in
disgust.
Nothing damps our ardour, however. We decide that the smallness of the
two rooms is a decided advantage, the view into the mildewed court
quaint and charming, the fact that water is obtained from a common tap
on the landing no particular detriment. The girl, pleased that I am
pleased, becomes enthusiastic. It will be her first home. Her heart
warms to it. Scant as it is, no other will ever be quite so dear. With
the eye of fancy she sees its bareness clad and comforted. Poor lonely
house! Seeing the light ashine in the wistful blue eyes, I too become
enthusiastic, and thus we inspire each other.
“It’s a dear little apartment,” I say. “How lucky we are to have
stumbled on it. I’m going to take it at once. We’ll pay the first
quarter’s rent right now.”
“You must geeve somesing to the concierge,” she whispers as I pay.
“Ah, I see! a sop to Cerebus. All right.”
“How much you geeve?”
“Twenty francs.”
“Mon Dieu! Twenty francs! Ten was enough. She sink now we are made of
money.”
Anastasia is always ready to remind me that we have entered on a
_régime_ of economy. She seems to have made up her mind that, like all
Americans, I have no idea of the value of money, and that as a thrifty
and prudent woman of the most thrifty and prudent race in the world,
it behooves her to keep a close hand on the purse strings. I am just
like a child, she decides, and she must look after me like a mother.
What a busy week it is! She takes into her own hands the furnishing of
our home, calculating every sou, pondering every detail. Time after
time we prowl past the furnishing shops on the Avenue du Maine, trying
to decide what we had best take. There is a novel pleasure in this.
Thus I am absurdly pleased when, on our deciding to take a table at
twenty-two francs, I find a place where I can buy exactly the same for
twenty-one.
We save money on the cleaning of the house by doing it ourselves. There
is the floor to wax and polish. For the latter operation I sit down on
a pad of several thicknesses of flannel, then she, catching my feet,
pulls me around on the slippery surface till it shines like a mirror.
We are very proud of that glossy floor, and regard our work almost with
reverence, stepping on it as one might the sacred carpet of Mecca.
Then comes the furnishing. First, there is the bedroom. We buy two
little beds of the fold-up variety, and set them side by side. Our
bedding, though only of cotton, is, we decide, softer and nicer than
linen and wool; and the pink quilt that covers both beds, could, we
declare, scarce be told from silk. Our wardrobe--what is easier than
to make a broad shelf about six feet high, and hang from it chintz
curtains behind which a dozen hooks are screwed into the wall.
Equally simple are our other arrangements. A cosy corner can be deftly
made of boards and cushions. She insists on me buying a superannuated
armchair, and she re-covers it, so that it looks like new. She selects
cheap but dainty curtains, a pretty table-cloth to hide the rough
table, so that you’d never know; a little buffet, a mirror for the
bedroom, pictures for the walls, kitchen things, table things--really,
it’s awful how much you require for a _ménage_, and how quickly in
spite of yourself your precious money melts.
These are the merry days, but at last all is finished--the first home.
What if we have exceeded the margin a little? Everything is really cosy
and comforting.
“This is an occasion,” I say. “Let us celebrate it.”
In our little stove, heated to a cherry glow, we roast our maiden
chicken. The first time we put it on the table it is not quite enough
done. We peer at it anxiously, we probe at it cautiously, finally we
decide to put it back for another quarter of an hour. But then--ye
gods! What a bird! How plump and brown and savoury! How it sizzles in
the amber gravy! Never, think we, have we tasted fowl so delicious. We
eat it with reverence.
After that she makes one of the seven-and-thirty salads of that land of
salads; then we have a dish of _petits pois_, and we finish off with a
great golden _brioche_ and red currant jam.
“Now,” I say, “we’ll drink to ourselves, and to our ’appy ’ome; and, by
the gods, we’ll drink in champagne!”
With that I triumphantly produce a half-bottle of _Mousseux_
that I have been hiding, a graceful bottle with a cap of gold.
Appalling extravagance! _Veuve Amiot!_ Who could tell it from _Veuve
Clicquot_?--and it costs only a franc and a half.
Cut the wire! Watch the cork start up, slowly, slowly ... then-- Pop!
away it springs, and smacks the ceiling. Quickly I fill her a foaming
glass, and we drink to “La France.” After that, sitting over the fire,
we plunge long spongy biscuits into the bubbling wine that seems to
seethe in fierce protest at being thus tormented. And if you do not
think we are as happy as the joyous liquor we sip, you do not know
Youth and Paris. To conclude the evening, we scurry off to the Cinema
theatre as merry as children.
Most of the films are American, and what is my amazement to find
that one of them, all cowboys, breeze, and virtue rewarded, is a
cinematisation of my own book, _Rattlesnake Ranch_. Yes, there are my
characters--the sheriff’s daughter, Mike the Mule-skinner, and the
rest. A thrill runs down my back, almost a shiver.
“How do you like it?” I ask the girl.
“I love it. I love all sings Americaine now.”
“Really, it’s awful rubbish. You mustn’t judge America by things like
that.”
“I love it,” she protests stoutly.
We get home quite tired; but after she has gone to bed, I get out
my pen and plunge into a new article. It is called, _How to be a
Successful Wife_.
CHAPTER II
THAT MUDDLE-HEADED SANTA CLAUS
In the morning Anastasia always has her _ménage_ to do. She sweeps till
the parquet is like a mirror, and dusts till not a speck can you find
from floor to ceiling. No priest could take his ministrations more
seriously than Anastasia her daily routine as a _femme d’intérieur_,
and on these occasions she makes me feel negligible to the point of
humility. So I kiss her, and after being duly inspected and adjured to
take precious care of myself, I am permitted to depart.
Oh, these morning walks! How this Paris inspires and exalts me! The
year is closing with a seasonable brilliancy of starry nights and
diamond-bright mornings. How radiant the sunshine seems as I emerge
from our gloomy porch-way, with its prison-like gate! The gaunt
rue Mazarin is a lane of light, and the ancient houses, with their
inscriptions of honourable service seem to smile in every wrinkle. Each
has a character of its own. There are some that step disdainfully back
from their fellows, and there are quaint roofs and unexpected, pokey
little windows, and a dilapidated irregularity that takes one back to
the days of swashbuckling romance.
At the end of the street I stop to give a penny to the blind man who
stamps his cold feet and holds out his red hand. On this particular
morning he stamps a little more vigorously than usual, and the red
hand is so numb that it seems insensible to the touch of the copper
coin. The Seine flashes with light. Upholstered with its long, slim
quays, it looks more than ever gilt and gracious. Yes, it is cold. The
darting _bâteaux-mouche_ are icicle-fringed, and the guardians of the
few book-bins that are open are muffled to the ears. I wear no coat,
because, except for my old mackintosh, I do not possess one. I have,
however, bought a long muffler which I wind around my throat, and allow
to flutter behind. People look oddly at me; because, where the world
wears a coat, the coatless man becomes a mark.
From the Pont des Arts the river is yellow in colour, and seethes with
slush ice. The sun is poised above the Institute, whose dome is black
against the sky. The Ile de la Cite is a wedge of high grey houses
that seem to pierce the Pont-Neuf bridge, and protrude in a green
point, dominated by an enormous tree, through whose branches I can
dimly discern the statue of Henri Quatre. Afar, the sweeping rampart of
houses that overhang the river melts in pearly haze, and the dim ranges
of roofs uprise like an arena amid which I can see the time-defying
towers of Notre Dame and the piercing delicacy of the spire, as it
claims the sun in a lance of light.
Here I pause to fill (with reverence) the meerschaum pipe, which is
colouring as coyly as a sunkissed peach. “What a privilege to live in
this adorable Paris!” I think: “How exasperatingly beautiful!”
Under the statue of Voltaire I stop for a moment to regard that
enigmatic smile: then I turn to the rue Bonaparte. The École des
Beaux-Arts is disgorging its students, fantastic little fellows with
broad-brimmed hats and dark, downy faces. Here they come, these
vivacious _rapins_ drawn from all the world by that mighty magnet,
Paris. Art is in the very air. In that old quadrangle it quivers from
each venerable stone. It challenges at every turn. The shops that line
the street exude it. Since I have come here it is odd how I have felt
its inspiration, so confident and serene, making me disgusted with
everything I have done.
Striking up the rue de Rennes I come to a doorway bearing the sign in
large letters:
MONT DE PIETE
Trust the French to do things gracefully. Now, if this was a sordid
Anglo-Saxon pawnshop I would be reconnoitring up and down, imagining
every one knew my errand. Then I would sneak upstairs like a thief
trying to dispose of stolen property. But a Mont de Piété--“here goes!”
In spite, however, of its benevolent designation I find this French
pawnshop in no way disposed to generosity. Even the most hardened
London pawnbroker could hardly be more niggard in appraisal of my
silver cigarette case than this polite Mont de Pietist who offers me
twenty francs on it. Twenty! it is worth eighty; but my French is too
rudimentary for argument, and as twenty francs is not enough for my
purpose I draw forth with a sigh my precious meerschaum and realise
another five francs on that.
“What does it matter?” I think dolefully. “’Til the tide turns no more
smoking. After all, oh mighty Nicotine, am I thy slave? Never! Here do
I defy thee! Oh, little pipe, farewell! We’ll meet again, I trust, in
the shade of the mazuma tree.”
It is now nearly half-past eleven, and already the Parisian mind
is turning joyfully to thoughts of _déjeûner_. Portly men, to whom
eating is a religion are spurring appetite with _apéritif_. Within the
restaurants many have already lunched on a sea of Graves and gravy. “Be
it ever so humble,” I decide. “There’s no cooking like ‘Home.’”
With which sentiment I pause before a little shop devoted to the sale
of ladies’ furs, and joyfully regard the object of my journey. It is
a large, sleek, glossy muff of the material known as electric rabbit,
and its price is twenty-five francs. It just matches a long wrap of
Anastasia’s, rather worn out but still nice looking.
“How lucky I ran across it yesterday!” I think, as I hurry joyfully
home with the muff under my arm. “And to-morrow’s Christmas Day too. I
don’t mind giving up tobacco one bit.”
So many others are hastening home with parcels under their arms! Such
a happy Santa Claus spirit fills the air! Every one seems so glad-eyed
and rosy. I almost feel sorry for the naked cherubs in the centre of
the basin in the Luxembourg. Icicles encase them to the toes. Poor
little Amours! so pretty in the spring sunshine, now so forlorn.
How quietly I let myself into the apartment, I am afraid she will hear
my key scroop in the lock and run as usual to greet me. Softly I slip
into the bedroom and pushing the parcel into the suitcase I lock it
quickly. Safe!
“Little Thing!” I shout, but there is no reply.
I look into the kitchen, into the dining-room, into the cupboard--no
sign of her. Yet often she will hide in order to jump out on me.
“Come out! I know you’re there,” I cry in several corners. No Little
Thing.
Then I must confess I begin to feel just a wee bit anxious; when
cautiously I hear another key scroop in the lock. It is Anastasia, and
she has evidently been walking briskly for her eyes are radiant, and a
roseleaf colour flutters in her cheeks. I watch her steal in just as I
have done, holding behind her a largish parcel.
“Hullo! What have you got there?”
She jumps, then tries to conceal the package. Seeing that it is useless
she turns on me imperiously.
“Go away one moment! Oh go, please!”
“Tell me what’s in your parcel, then.”
“It’s nossing. It’s not your affair. Please give it to me. Now you are
not nice. Oh thanks! Now you are nice. To-morrow I show you what it is.”
So I leave off teasing her and make no further reference to the
mysterious packet.
There is no doubt the Christmas spirit is getting into me, for I
find it more and more difficult to keep my mind on my work. This is
distressing, because lately I have been making but slow progress.
Often I find myself halting ten minutes or more to empale some elusive
word. Greatly am I concerned over rhythm and structure. Of ideas I
have no lack; it is form, form that holds me in travail. And the more
I perspire over my periods the more self-exacting I seem to become.
There will arrive a time, I fear, when my ideal of expression will be
so high I will not be able to express myself at all. I wonder if it is
something in the air of this Paris that calls to all that is fine and
high in the soul?
After supper Anastasia remarks in some surprise: “Why! you do not smoke
zis hevening?”
“No, I’m taking a rest. It’s good to leave off sometimes.”
She seems about to say something further, but checks herself. Oh, how I
do miss that after-dinner pipe! Life suddenly seems hollow and empty.
I had always sworn that the best part of a meal was the smoke after; I
had always vowed that tobacco added twenty per cent. to my enjoyment of
life, and now--
“Little Thing,” I say presently, “let’s go out on the boulevard. I
can’t work to-night. It’s Christmas eve.”
She responds happily. It is always a joy to her to go out with me.
“You’d better put on your fur. It’s awfully cold.”
“No, I don’t sink so this hevening, if you don’t mind. I have not cold,
not one bit.”
As we emerge from the gloom of the rue Mazarin the river leaps at us
in a blaze of glory. Under a sky of rosy cloud it is a triumph of
jewelled vivacity. Exultantly it seems to mirror all the radiance of
the city, and the better to display its jewels it undulates in infinite
unrest. Here the play of light is like the fluttering of a thousand
argent-winged moths, there a weaving of silver foliage, traversed by
wriggling emerald snakes. Yonder it is a wimpling of purest platinum;
afar, a billowing of beaten bronze. Bridge beyond bridge is jewel-hung,
and coruscates with shifting fires. The little steamers drag their
chains of trembling gold, their trains of rippling ruby; even the black
quays seem to be supported on undulant pillars of amber.
Over yonder on the right bank the great Magasins overspill their
radiance. They are like huge honey-combs of light, nearly all window,
and each window a square of molten gold. The roaring streets flame
in fiery dust, and flakes of gold seem to quiver skyward. Oh, how it
stirs me, this Paris! It moves me to delight and despair. To think that
I can feel so intensely its wonder and beauty yet to be powerless to
express it. I can imagine how too much beauty drives to madness; how
the Chinese poet was drowned trying to clasp the silver reflexion of
the moon.
And so we walk along, I fathoms deep in dream, and the little grey
figure by my side trying to keep pace with me. She, too, has that
appreciation of beauty and art that seems innate in every Parisienne,
yet she cannot understand how I can stare at a scene ten, fifteen,
twenty minutes. However, she is very patient, and effaces herself most
happily.
Never have I seen the Boul’ Mich’ so gay, and nearly all are carrying
parcels. A million messengers of Santa Claus are hastening to fill
with delight the eyes of innocence. The _Petit Jésus_ they call him
here, these charming Parisian children. Their precious letters to him,
placed so carefully in the chimney, are often wept over by mothers in
estranging after years. What joy when there comes an answer to their
tiny petitions! When there is none: “Ah! it is because you have not
been wise, Clairette. The Little Jesus is not pleased with you.” But
the Gift-bringer always relents, and the little shoes, brushed by each
tot till not a speck of dulness remains, are found in the morning
overspilling with glorious things.
All along the outer edge of the pavement stalls have been set up,
tenanted by portly, red-faced women, who are padded against the cold
till their black-braided jackets fit tight as a drum. There are booths
of brilliant confectionery, of marvellous mechanical toys, of perfumery
and patent medicines, of appliances for the kitchen and knick-knacks
for the boudoir, of music, of magnifying glasses, of hair restorer, of
boot polish.
And the street hawkers haranguing the crowd! There are vendors of holly
and mistletoe; men carrying umbrellas all stuck over with imitation
snails to ‘bring the good luck’; others with switches to spank one’s
mother-in-law; others with grotesque spiders on wire to make the girls
scream.
It is nearly midnight when we reach our apartment. The cafés are
a glitter of light and a storm of revelry. The supper that is the
prelude to further merriment is just beginning, and thousands of happy,
careless people are drinking champagne, shouting, singing, laughing.
But the rue Mazarin is very dark and quiet, and the girl is very tired.
Then when I am sure that she is asleep I steal to my suitcase and
taking out the precious muff lay it at the foot of her bed. Bending
over her, as she sleeps like a child, I kiss her. So I too fall asleep.
I am awakened by her scream of delight. She is sitting up, fondling the
new muff.
“Oh, I am so please. You don’t know how I am please, darleen.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Only I thought it would go nicely with your other
fur.”
Her face changes oddly. Then she rises and brings me the mysterious
parcel.
“It’s your Christmas. I’m sorry I could not geeve you anysing bettaire.
Oh, how I love my muff.”
If it had been plucked beaver she could not have been more pleased.
I open my parcel eagerly, and a fragrant odour greets me. It is a
silver-mounted tobacco jar, full of my favourite amber flake.
Over our _petit déjeûner_ of coffee and _croissants_ we are both very
gay. I decide not to work that day; we will go for a walk.
“Geeve me your pipe, darleen. I feel it for you.”
“I don’t seem to be able to find it,” I answer, searching my pockets
elaborately.
“You have not lost it?”
“Oh, no, just mislaid it. Never mind, it will turn up all right. Are
you ready?”
“Yes, all ready.” She holds the precious muff up to her chin, peering
at me over it.
“But your wrap! Aren’t you going to put that on too?”
Then in fear and trembling she confesses. She has taken her fur to the
Mont de Piété that she might have ten francs to buy the tobacco jar.
“Why!” I cry, “I sold my pipe so that I might have enough to buy your
muff.”
Then I laugh loudly, and after a little she joins me; and there we
are both laughing till we are tired; which is not the worst way of
beginning Christmas Day, is it?
CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF LIGHT
“Little Thing,” I say severely, “you must never say ‘Damn.’”
“But you say it, darleen.”
“Yes, but men may do and say things women must not even think of. Say
‘Dash’ if you want to say anything.”
“Oh, you are funny. You tell me I must not say certeen words in
English, yet in France everybody say ‘Mon Dieu.’”
“Yes, it’s not good form to say those words in English; just as you
tell me in France in polite society one never refers to a thousand
sacred pigs. Profanity is to some extent a matter of geography.”
But if I succeed in prohibiting the profanity of my country, I cannot
prevent her picking up its slang. For instance, “Sure Mike” is often
on her lips. She has heard me use it, and it resembles so much her own
“Surement” that she naturally and innocently adopts it. I tremble now
when she speaks English before any punctilious stranger, in case, to
some polite inquiry, she answers with an enthusiastic: “Sure Mike.”
I have insisted on her recovering her fur from the Mont de Piété, and
she in her turn has made me buy a long, black brigandish cape that
has previously been worn by some budding Baudelaire or some embryo
Verlaine.
“Seems to me,” I grumble, “now I have this thing I might as well get
one of those bat-winged ties, and a hat with a six-inch brim.”
“Oh, you will be lovely like that,” she assures me with enthusiasm.
“And you must let your hair grow long like hartist. Oh, how _chic_ you
will be!”
“Perhaps you’d also like me to cultivate an Assyrian beard and curl my
hair into ringlets like that man we sat next to at the café du Dome
last night.”
“No, no; I do not want that you hide your so nice mouth, darleen. I am
prefair American way now.”
“You prefer Americans to Frenchmen, then.”
“All French girls prefer American and English to Frenchmans. They are
so frank, so honest. One can trust them.”
“So you would rather be married to an Englishman than a Frenchman?”
“Mon Dieu! yes, The Frenchmans deceive the womans very much, but the
Englishman is always _comme-il-faut_. If ever I have leetle girl I want
she shall marry Englishmans. Ah! she shall be like her fazzer, that
leetle girl, wiz blue eyes, and colour so fresh; and I want she have
the lovely blond hair like all English children.”
“What if you have a boy?”
“Ah no! I no want boy. I know I am selfeesh. The boys have the best
sings in the life, and it is often hard for the womans. But if I have
girl, I keep her love always. If I have boy soon I lose heem. He get
marry, and zen it is feenish. But leetle girl, in trooble she always
come back to her mosser.”
“And suppose you don’t have either?”
“Oh, I sink zat would be very, very sad.”
Often have I marvelled at the passion for maternity that burns in
Anastasia. Her eyes shine so tenderly on children, and she will stop to
caress some little one so yearningly.
“By the way, have you ever noticed the child on the ground floor
apartment?--a little one with hair the colour of honey.”
“Oh yes; she’s good friend of me. She is adorable. Oh how I love have
childs like zat. She’s call Solonge. She’s belong Frosine.”
“Who’s Frosine?”
“She’s girl what sew all day. She work for the Bon Marché. It’s awfool
how she have to work hard.”
“Poor woman!”
“Oh no; she’s very ’appy like that. She’s free, and she have Solonge.
She sing all day when she sew. Oh, she have much of courage, much of
merit, that girl.”
“But,” I say, “would you like to have a child like that?”
“Why not, if I can care well for it and it make me ’appy?”
“But--it wouldn’t be moral.”
“No, but it would be natural.”
“Yes, but sometimes isn’t it wicked to be natural?”
“I do not understand. I do not sink Frosine is wicked. She’s so kind
and gently. She adore Solonge. She’s brave. All day she work and sing.
You do not sink she is all bad because she have childs?”
I did not immediately reply. I am wondering....
Have social conditions reached a very lofty status even yet when the
finest, truest instincts implanted in humankind are often denied? Does
not life mean effort, progress, human triumph? Can we not look forward
to a better time when present manifestly imperfect conditions will be
perfected?
“Yes, Anastasia,” I conclude; “the greatest man that ever lived should
take off his hat to the humblest mother, for she has accomplished
something he never could if he lived to be a thousand. But come! Let’s
go out on the Grand Boulevard. I’ve been working too hard; I’m fagged,
I’m stale, there’s a fog about my brain.”
Very proudly she dons her furs of electric rabbit, and rather ruefully
I wreathe myself in my conspiratorial cloak; then together we go down
into the city.
The City of Light! Is there another, I wonder, that flaunts so superbly
the triumph of man over darkness? From the Mount of Parnassus to the
Mount of the Martyrs all is a valley of light. The starry sky is
mocked by the starry city, its milky way, a river gleaming with gold,
shimmering with silver, spangled with green and garnet. The Place de la
Concorde is a very lily garden of light; up the jewelled sweep of the
Champs Elysee the lights are like sheeny pearls with here and there the
exquisite intrusion of a ruby; beneath a tremulous radiance of opals
the trees are bathed in milky light, while amid the twinkling groves
the night restaurants are sketched in fairy gold. The Grand Boulevards
are fiery-walled canyons down which roar tumultuous rivers of light;
the Place de l’Opera is a great eddy, flashing and myriad-gemmed; the
_magasins_ are blazing furnaces erupting light at every point: They
are festooned with flame; they are crammed with golden lustre; they
blaze their victorious refulgence in signs of light against the sky.
And so night after night this city of sovereign splendour hurls in
flashing light its gauntlet of defiance to the Dark.
The pavements are packed with people, moving slowly in opposing
streams. Most are garbed in ceremonial best; and many carry flowers,
for this is the sacred day of family gathering. The pavement edge is
lined with tiny booths and shrill with importunate clamour.
We stop to gaze at some of the mechanical toys. Here are aeroplanes
that whirl around, peacocks that strut and scream, rabbits that hop and
squeak, shoe-blacks, barbers, acrobats, jugglers, all engaged in their
various ways. But what amuses us most is a little servant maid who
walks forward in a great hurry carrying a pile of plates, trips, sends
them scattering, then herself falls sprawling. How I laugh! Yet I am at
the same time laughing at myself for laughing. Am I going back to my
second childhood? No! for see; all those bearded Frenchmen are laughing
too, just like so many grown-up children.
“Come,” I suggest, after we have ranged along a mile or so of these
tiny booths, “let’s sit down in front of one of the cafés.”
With difficulty we find a place, and ordering two _cafés créme_ watch
the dense procession. The honest bourgeois are going to New Year’s
Dinner, and their smiles are very happy. Soon they will frankly abandon
themselves to the pleasures of the table, discussing each dish with
rapture and eating till they can eat no more.
“What a race of gluttons are the French,” I remark severely to
Anastasia. “Food and dress is about all they seem to think of. The
other day I read in the paper that a celebrated _costumier_ had
received the cross of the Legion of Honour, and this morning I see
that a well-known _restaurateur_ has also been deemed worthy of the
decoration. There you are! Reward your tailors and your cooks while
your poets and your painters go buttonless. Oh, if there’s a people I
despise, it’s one that makes a god of its stomach! By the way, what
have we got for dinner?”
“Oh, I got chickens.”
“A good fat one, I hope.”
“Yes, nice fat chickens. I pay five franc for it. You are not sorry?”
“No, that’s all right. We can make it do two evenings, and we allow
ourselves five francs a day for grub. I fancy we don’t spend even that,
on an average?”
“No, about four and half franc.”
Every week she brought her expense book to me, and very solemnly I
wrote beneath it: Examined and found correct. Another habit was to
present for my approval a menu of all our meals for the coming week
beneath which I would, in the same serious spirit, write: Approved. To
these impressive occasions she contributed a proper dignity; yet at a
hint of praise for her house-keeping nothing could exceed her delight.
Presently we rise and continue our walk. Everywhere is the same holiday
spirit, the same easily amused crowd. There are song writers hawking
their ditties, poor artists peddling their paintings, a “canvas for a
crust.” Every needy art is gleaning on the streets.
“Stop!” she cries suddenly. Drawing me in the direction of a small
crowd; “let’s watch the silhouette man.”
He is young, glib, good-looking. He has audacious eyes and a
rapscallion smile. This smile is sometimes positively impish in its
mockery; yet otherwise he is rather like a cherub. His complexion is
pinkish, his manner mercurial, his figure shapely and slim. He is
dressed in the cloak, broad-brimmed hat, and voluminous velveteen
trousers of the _rapin_. I stare at him. Something vaguely familiar in
him startles me.
In one hand he holds a double sheet of black paper, in the other a pair
of scissors. For a moment he looks keenly at his subject, then getting
the best angle for the profile, proceeds without any more ado to cut
the silhouette. It is a very deft, delicate performance and all over in
a minute.
“Just watch him, Anastasia,” I say after a pause; “I think there’s
something interesting going to happen.” Then in a drawling voice I
remark:
“Well, if that’s not a dead ringer for Livewire Lorrimer!”
He hears me, looks up like a flash, scrutinises me in a puzzled way.
“I haven’t heard that name for fifteen years. Of all the--why, if it
isn’t Jimmy Madden, Mad Madden, Blackbeard the pirate, Red Hand the
scout, friend of my boyhood! I say! there’s a dozen people waiting and
this is my busy day. Ask your friend to stand up to the light and I’ll
make a silhouette of her while we talk.”
“My wife.”
“Bless us! Married too! Well, congratulations. Charmed to meet Madame.
There! Just stand so.”
With great dexterity he proceeds to cut Anastasia’s delicate features
on the black paper.
“Great Scott! I haven’t heard a word about you since I left home. But
then I’ve lost track of all the crowd. Well, what in the world are you
doing here?”
“I’m trying to break into the writing game. And you?”
“For ten years I’ve been trying to become an artist. Occasionally I get
enough to eat. I have to work for a living, as you see at present; but
when I get a little ahead I go back to my art. Where do you live?”
I tell him.
“Oh, I know, garden and statuary in the court. I lived in that street
myself for a time, but my landlord and I did not agree. He had
ridiculous ideas on the subject of rent. My idea of rent is money you
owe. He was so prejudiced that one night I lowered all my effects to a
waiting friend with a _voiture à bras_, and since then rue Mazarin has
seen little of me. But I’d like to come and see you. We’ll talk over
old days.”
“Yes, I do wish you would come.”
“I will. Ah, Madame, here is your charming profile. I only regret that
my clumsy scissors fail to do you justice. Yes, Madden, I’ll come. And
now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a dozen people waiting. I must make
my harvest while the sun shines. Good-bye, just now. Expect me soon.”
He waves us an airy farewell, and a moment after, with the same intent
gaze, he is following the features of a fat Frenchwoman, who laughs
immoderately at his pleasantries.
We walk home almost without speaking. Anastasia has got into the way of
respecting my thoughts. To her I am Balzac, Hugo and Zola rolled into
one, and labelled James Horace Madden. Who is she that should break
in on the dreams of this great author? Rather let her foster them by
sympathetic silence. Yet on this occasion she looks up in my face and
sighs wistfully:
“What are you sinking of, darleen?”
_Now, here’s what I think she thinks I am thinking_:
“Oh, this fiery, fervid Paris, how can my pen proclaim its sovereignty
over cities, its call to high endeavour, its immemorial grace? How
can I paint its folly and its faith, its laughter and its tears, its
streets where tragedy and farce walk arm in arm, where parody hobnobs
with pride, and beauty bends to ridicule! Oh, exquisite Paris! so old
and yet so eternally young, so peerless, yet ever prinking and preening
to make more exorbitant demands on our admiration....” And so on.
_Here’s what I am really thinking_:
“Funny I should run into Livewire like that. To think of it! We
swapped the same dime novels, robbed the same cherry-trees. Together
we competed for the bottom place in the class. (I think I generally
won.) By pedagogic standards we were certainly impossible. And yet
at some studies how precocious! How I remember that novel I wrote,
_The Corsair’s Crime, or the Hound of the Hellispont_, illustrated by
Livewire on every page. Oh, I’d give a hundred dollars to have that
manuscript to-day!” and so on.
_Here’s what I say I am thinking_:
“I was wondering, Anastasia, if when you bought that chicken, you let
them clean it in the shop. Because if you do they just take it away
and bring you back an inferior one. You can’t trust them. You should
clean it yourself. Be sure you roast it gently, so as to have it nicely
browned all over....” And so on.
It is night now and I am working on my articles while she sews
steadily. It has been a long silent evening, a fire of _boulets_ throws
out a gentle heat, and she sits on one side, I on the other. About ten
o’clock she complains of feeling tired, and decides to go to bed. After
our habit I lie down on my own bed, to wait with her till she goes to
sleep; for she is just like a child in some ways. I am reading, and the
better to see, I lie with my head where my feet should be.
As she is dropping off to sleep, suddenly she says:
“Will you let me hold your foot, darleen?”
“Yes, it’s there. But if you want to look for holes in the sock, you
won’t find any.”
“No, it’s not zat. I just want to pretend it’s leetle _bébé_.”
“So she holds it close to her breast, and ever since then she will not
sleep unless she is holding what she calls ‘her _poupée_.’”
CHAPTER IV
THE CITY OF LAUGHTER
The last few weeks have passed so swiftly I scarce can credit it. In
the mornings my vitalising walks; in the afternoons my lapidary work
in prose. I have begun a series of articles on Paris, and have just
finished the first two, bestowing on them a world of loving care. Never
have I known such a steady glow of inspiration. A pure delight in
form and colour thrills in me. I begin to see beauty in the commonest
things, to find a joy in the simplest moments of living.
It is rather curious, this. For instance, I gaze in rapture at a
shop where vegetables are for sale, charmed with its oasis of fresh
colouring in the grey street, the globular gold of turnips, the rich
ruby of radishes, the ivory white of parsnips. Then a fish shop charms
me, and I turn from the burning orange of the dories to the olive and
pearl of the merlin; from the jewelled mail of the mackerel, to the
silver cuirass of the herring. And every day seems fresh to me. I hail
it with a newborn joy. I seem to have regained all the wonder and vital
interest of the child point of view. In my work, especially, do I find
such a delight that I shall be sorry to die chiefly because it will end
my labour. “So much to do,” I sigh, “and only one little lifetime to do
it in.”
Then there are long, serene evenings by the fire, where I ponder over
my prose, while Anastasia sits absorbed in her work. What a passion
she has for her needle! She plies it as an artist, delighting in
difficulties, in intricate lacework, in elaborate embroidery. In little
squares of fine net she works scenes from Fontaine; or else over a
great frame on which a sheet of satin is tightly stretched, she makes
wonderful designs in silks of delicate colouring. At such times she
will forget everything else, and sit for hours tranquilly happy. So I
write and dream; while she plies that exquisite needle, and perhaps
dreams too.
“Oh, how good it is to be poor!” I said last night. “What a new
interest life takes on when one has to fight for one’s bread! How much
better to have nothing and want everything, than to have everything and
want nothing! Just think, Little Thing, how pleased we are at the end
of the week if we’ve spent five francs less than we thought! Here’s a
month gone now and I’ve done four articles and a story, and we still
have three hundred francs left.”
“When it will be that you will send them to the journals?”
“Oh, no hurry, I want to stack up a dozen, and then I’ll start shooting
them in.”
“We have saved four francs and half last week.”
“The deuce we have! Then let’s go to Bullier to-night. We both want a
touch of gay life. Come! we’ll watch Paris laugh.”
So we climbed the Boul’ Mich’, till at its head in a crescent of light
we saw the name of the famous old dance-hall. Threading our way amid
the little green tables, past the bowling alley and the bar, we found a
place in the side-gallery.
We were looking down on a scene of the maddest gaiety. The great floor
was dense with dancers and kaleidoscopic in colouring. In the wildest
of spirits five hundred men and girls were capering, shuffling, jigging
and contorting their bodies in time to tumultuous music. Some danced
limb to limb, others were bent out like a bow; some sidled like a crab,
others wriggled like an eel; some walked, some leaped, some slid, some
merely kicked sideways: it was dancing in delirium, Bedlam in the
ball-room.
And what conflicting colours! Here a girl in lobster pink galloped
with another whose costume was like mayonnaise. There a negress in
brilliant scarlet with a corsage of silver darted through the crowd
like a flame. A hideous negro was dancing with a pretty grisette who
with fluffy hair and flushed cheeks looked at him adoringly as he pawed
her with his rubber-blue palms. An American girl in shirt waist and
bicycle skirt zig-zagged in and out with a dashing Spaniard. A tall,
bashful Englishman pranced awkwardly around with a _midinette_ in
citron and cerise, while a gentleman from China solemnly gyrated with
a _mannequin_ in pistachio and chocolate. Pretty girls nearly all; and
where they lacked in looks, full of that sparkling Parisian charm.
“There’s your friend, Monsieur Livwir,” said Anastasia suddenly. Sure
enough, there in that maelstrom of merriment I saw Lorrimer dancing
with a girl of dazzling prettiness. Presently I caught his eye and
after the dance he joined us.
“You haven’t been to see me yet,” I remarked.
“No, been too busy,--working every moment of my time.” Then realising
that the present moment rather belied him he shrugged his shoulders.
To tell the truth I have been feeling a little hurt. We sentimentalists
are so prone to measure others by our own standards. Our meeting, so
interesting to me, had probably never given him another thought. Now I
saw that while I was an egoist, Lorrimer was an egotist; but with one of
his boyish smiles he banished my resentment.
“Let me introduce you to Rougette,” he said airily; “she’s my model.”
He beckoned to the tall blonde. Rarely have I seen a girl of more
distracting prettiness. Her hair was of ashen gold; Parma violets might
have borrowed their colour from her eyes; Nice roses might have copied
their tint from her cheeks, and her tall figure was of a willowy grace.
Her manner had all the winning charm of frank simplicity. She was
indeed over pretty, one of those girls who draw eyes like a magnet, so
that the poor devil who adores them has little peace.
“The belle of all Brittany,” said Lorrimer proudly. “I discovered her
when I was sketching at Pont Aven last summer. I’m going to win the
Prix de Rome with a picture of that girl. I’m the envy of the Quarter.
Several Academicians have tried to get her away from me; but she’s
loyal,--as good as she looks.”
I did not find it easy to talk to Rougette. Her French was the _argot_
of the Quarter, grafted on to the _patois_ of the Breton peasant; mine,
of the school primer. Our conversation consisted chiefly of smiles, and
circumspect ones at that, as Anastasia had her eye on me.
“After another dance,” suggested Lorrimer, “let’s go over to the Lilas.
We’ll probably see Helstern there. I’d like you to meet him. Besides
it’s the night the Parnassian crowd get together. Perhaps you’ll be
amused.”
“Delighted.”
“All right.”
Off they went with their arms around each other’s necks, and I
watched them swiftly mingle with the dancers. What a pretty couple
they made!--Lorrimer so dashing and debonair, with his face of a
sophisticated cherub, and his auburn hair that looked as if it might
have been enamelled on his head, so smooth was it; Rougette with the
mien of a goddess and the simple soul of a Breton fishwife.
But it was hard to follow them now, for the throng on the floor had
doubled. In ranks that reached to the side galleries the spectators
hemmed them in. The variety of costume grew more and more bewildering.
Men were dressed as women, women as men. Four monks entered arm in
arm with four devils; Death danced with Spring, an Incroyable with a
stone-age man, an Apache with a Salomé. More and more _négligé_ grew
the costumes as models, mannequins, milliners, threw aside encumbering
garments. Every one was getting wound up. Yells and shrieks punctuated
the hilarity; then the great orchestra burst into a popular melody and
every one took up the chorus:
“Down in Mozambique, Mozambique, Mozambique,
It’s so _chic_, oh so _chic_;
No need to bother over furs and frills.
No need to worry over tailor’s bills;
Down in Mozambique, Mozambique, Mozambique,
You may wear fig-leaves there
When you go a-mashing in the open air
In Mo-zam-bique.”
As they finished men tossed their partners in the air and carried them
off the floor. Every one was hot and dishevelled; the air reeked of
pachouli and perspiration, and seeing Lorrimer signalling to us we made
our escape.
I remember how deliciously pure seemed the outside air. The long
tree-clad Avenue de l’Observatoire was blanched with hoar frost and
gleamed whitely. The face of the sky was pitted with stars, and the
crescent moon seemed to scratch it like the manicured nail-tip of a
lovely woman. Across the street amid the trees beaconed the lights of a
large corner café, and to this we made our way.
A long room, lined with tables, dim with tobacco smoke, clamorous with
conversation. We found a vacant table, and Lorrimer, after consulting
us, ordered “ham sandveeches et grog American.” In the meantime I was
busy gazing at the human oddities around me. It seemed as if all the
freaks of the Quarter had gathered here. Nearly all wore their hair of
eccentric length. Some had it thrown back from the brow and falling
over the collar in a cascade. Others parted it in the middle and let it
stream down on either side, hiding their ears. Some had it cut square
to the neck, and coming round in two flaps; with others again it was
fuzzy and stood up like a nimbus. Many of the women, on the other hand,
had it cut squarely in the Egyptian manner; so that it was difficult to
tell them at a distance from their male companions.
“It’s really a fact,” said Lorrimer, “that long hair is an aid to
inspiration. Every time I cut mine it’s good-bye work till it grows
again. And as I really hate it long my work suffers horribly.”
The centre of attraction seemed to be a tall man whose sallow face
was framed in inky hair that detached itself in snaky locks. As if to
accentuate the ravenish effect he wore an immense black silk stock, and
his pince-nez dangled by a black riband. This was Paul Ford, the Prince
of the Poets, the heritor of the mantle of Verlaine.
“There’s a futurist poet,” said Lorrimer, pointing to a man in a corner
who had evidently let his comb fall behind the bureau and been too lazy
to go after it. He had a peaked face overwhelmed by stringy hair, with
which his beard and whiskers made such an intimate connection that
all you could see was a wedge of nose and two pale-blue eyes gleaming
through the tangle.
“See that man to the right,” went on my informer; “that’s the cubist
sculptor, a Russian Jew.”
The sculptor looked indeed like a mujic, with coarse, spiky hair
growing down over his forehead, eyebrows that made one arch over his
fierce little eyes, up-turned nose, a beard and moustache, which,
divided by his mouth, looked exactly like a scrubbing-brush the centre
of which has been rubbed away by long usage.
“Look! There’s an Imagist releasing some of his inspirations.”
This was a meagre little man in evening dress, with a bony skull
concealed by the usual mop of hair. He had a curiously elongated face,
something like a horse, the eyes of a seraph, the shell-like colour of
a consumptive, large, vividly-red lips, and an ineffable smile which
exposed a small cemetery of decayed teeth.
“Ah!” said Lorrimer suddenly; “see that chap sitting lonely in the
corner with his arms folded and a sort of Strindberg-Nietzsche-Ibsen
expression? Well, that’s Helstern.”
I saw a tall, youngish-oldish sort of man with a face of distinguished
taciturnity. His mouth was grimly clinched; two vertical lines were
written between his eyebrows, and a very high forehead was further
heightened by upstanding iron-grey hair. On the other hand his brown
eyes were soft, velvety and shy. He was dressed in dead black, with a
contrast of very white linen. Close to his elbow stood a great stein
of beer, while he puffed slowly from a big wooden pipe carved into a
fantastic Turk’s head.
“Poor old Helstern!” said Lorrimer; “he takes life so seriously. Take
life seriously and you’re going to get it in the neck: laugh at it and
it can never hurt you.”
This was his gay philosophy, as indeed it was of the careless and
merry Quarter he seemed to epitomise. Treat everything in a cynical
and mocking spirit, and you yourself are beyond the reach of irony. It
is so much easier to destroy than to build up. Yet there was something
tart and stimulating in his scorn of things as they are.
“Too bad to drag him from sublime heights of abstraction down to our
common level. Doesn’t he look like a seer trying to discern through the
anarchy of the present some hope for the future? Well, I’ll go over and
see if he’ll join us. He’s shy with women.”
So the Cynic descended on the Seer, and the Seer listened, drank,
smoked thoughtfully, looked covertly at the two girls, then rose and
approached us. With a shock of pity I saw that one of his legs was
shorter than the other, and terminated in a club foot. Otherwise he
was splendidly developed, and had one of the deepest bass voices I have
ever heard.
“Well, old man, alone as usual.”
Somewhat self-conscious and embarrassed, Helstern spoke rather stiffly.
“My dear Lorrimer, much as I appreciate your charming society there are
moments when I prefer to be alone.”
“Oh, I understand. Great thoughts incubated in silence. Own up now,
weren’t you thinking in nations?”
“As it happens,” answered the Seer in his grave, penetrating tones, “I
was thinking in nations. As a matter of fact I was listening to the
conversation of two Englishmen near me.”
He paused to light his pipe carefully, then went on in that deep,
deliberate voice.
“They were talking of International Peace--fools!”
“Oh, come now! You believe in International Peace?”
He stared gloomily into the bowl of his pipe.
“Bah! a chimera! futile babble! No, no; there are too many old scores
to settle, too many wrongs to right, too many blood feuds to be fought
to a finish. But there will be International War such as the world
has never seen. And why not? We are becoming a race of egotists,
civilisation’s mollycoddles; we set far too high a value on our lives.
Oh, I will hate to see the day when grand old war will cease, when we
will have the hearts of women, and the splendid spirit of revenge will
have passed away!”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Lorrimer; “he isn’t so bloodthirsty as he
sounds. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He’s actually a vegetarian. What work
are you doing now, you old fraud?”
Helstern looked round in that shy self-conscious way of his:
“I’m working on an allegorical group for the Salon.”
“What’s the subject?”
“Well, if I must confess it, it’s International Peace. Of course, it’s
absurd; but the only consolation for living in this execrable world is
that one can dream of a better one. To dream of beauty and to create
according to his dream, that is the divine privilege of the artist.”
“Yes, what dreamers are we artists!” said Lorrimer thoughtfully. “You,
Helstern, dream of leaving the world a little better than you find it;
I dream of Fame, of doing work that will win me applause; and you,
Madden--what do you dream of?”
“Oh, I don’t take myself quite so grandiosely,” I said with a laugh.
“I dream of making enough money to take me back to the States, to show
them I’m not a failure.”
“Failure!” said Lorrimer with some feeling; “it’s those who stay at
home that are the failures. Look at them--small country ministers,
provincial lawyers, flourishing shopkeepers; such are the shining
lights of our school-boy days. Tax-payers, pillars of respectability,
good honest souls, but--failures all.”
“A few are drummers,” I said. “The rest are humdrummers.”
“Yes,” said Lorrimer. “By way of example, let me relate the true
history of James and John.”
“James was the model boy. He studied his lessons, was conscientious
and persevering. He held the top of the class so often that he came
to consider he had an option on it. He nearly wore his books out with
study, and on prize-giving days he was the star actor on the programme.
Brilliant future prophesied for James.
“Twin brother John, on the other hand, as consistently held down the
bottom of the class. He was lazy, unambitious, irreverent. He preferred
play to study, and was the idol of the unregenerate. Direst failure
prophesied for John.
“James went into the hardware store and commenced to save his earnings.
Soon he was promoted to be salesman. He began to teach in the Sunday
School. He was eager to work overtime, and spent his evenings studying
the problems of the business.
“John began to take the downward path right away. He attended
race-courses, boldly entered saloons, haunted low music-halls. The
prophets looked wiser than ever. He lost his job and took to singing
at smoking concerts. He spent his time trying to give comic imitations
of his decent neighbours, and practising buck-and-wing dances till his
legs seemed double-jointed.
“James at this period wore glossy clothes, and refused to recognise
John on the street. John merely grinned.
“James stayed with the home town, married respectably, and had six
children in rapid succession as every respectable married man should.
He owned the house he lived in and at last became head of the hardware
store.
“John one day disappeared; said the village was too small for him;
wanted to get to a City where he could have scope for his talents.
Said the prophets: ‘I told you so.’
“And to-day James, my friends, is a school trustee, an alderman, a
deacon of the church. He is pointed out to the rising generation as a
model of industry and success. But John--where is John?
“Alas! John is, I regret to say, at present touring in the Frobert &
Schumann Vaudeville Circuit. He is a headliner, and makes five hundred
dollars a week. All he does for it is to sing some half a dozen songs
every night, in which he takes off his native townsmen, and to dance
some eccentric steps of his own invention. He has a limousine, a house
on Riverside Drive, and a box of securities in the Safety Deposit Vault
that makes the clerk stagger every time he takes it out. He talks of
buying up his native village some day and the prophets have gone out of
business.
“And now, friends, let’s pry out the unmoral moral. Honest merit may
cinch the boss job in the hardware store, but idle ignorance often
cops the electric sign on Broadway. The lazy man spends his time
scheming how to get the easy money--and often gets it. The ignorant
man, unwarped by tradition, develops on original lines that make for
fortune. Even laziness and ignorance can be factors of success. All of
which isn’t according to the Sunday School story book, but it’s the
world we live in. And now as I see Madam is tired, let’s bring the
session to a close.”
That night, as I was going home, with Anastasia clinging on my arm, I
said:
“And what is it you dream of, Little Thing?”
“Me! Oh, I dream all time I make good wife for the Beautiful One I
have.”
CHAPTER V
THE CITY OF LOVE
This morning in the course of my walk I was passing Cook’s corner in
the Place de l’Opera, when I was accosted from behind by an alcoholic
voice:
“Want to see the Crystal Palace to-day, sir?”
Now the Crystal Palace is one of these traps for the stranger with
which Paris is baited. Your Parisian knows these places as part of the
city’s life which is not there for the Frenchman but for the tourist
and stranger. These people look for these things as a part of the life
of Paris, your Parisian says, and in consequence they are there.
I was going on, then, when something familiar in the voice made me turn
sharply. Lo and behold!--O’Flather.
“Hullo, Professor!” I said, with a grin. “Gone out of the flea-taming
business?”
For a moment he stared at me.
“Hullo! young man. Yep. Met with a dirty deal. One of my helpers doped
the troupe. Them as wasn’t stiff and cold was no more good for work.
Busted me up.”
“Too bad. What are you doing now?”
“Working as a guide.”
“But you don’t know Paris!”
“’Tain’t necessary. Mighty few Paris guides know Paris. Don’t have to.”
“Well, I wish you luck,” I said, and left him. He looked after me
curiously. His eyes were bloodshot from excessive drinking, and his
dewlaps were blotched and sagging. “Vindictive brute!” I thought. “If
he only knew wouldn’t he be mad! What a ripping villain he’d make if
this was only fiction instead of real life!”
It was this morning, too, I made the acquaintance of Frosine. Passing
through the mildewed court I saw peering through the window of a
basement room the wistful face of little Solonge. Against the dark
interior her head of silky gold was like that of a cherub painted on a
panel. Struck with a sudden idea, I knocked at their door.
Solonge opened it, turning the handle, after several attempts, with
both hands, and very proud of the feat. She welcomed me shyly, and a
clear voice invited me to enter. If the appearance of the child had
formerly surprised me, I was still more astonished when I saw the
mother. She was almost as dark as the little one was fair. The contrast
was so extreme that one almost doubted their relationship.
Scarcely did she pause in her work as I entered. She seemed, indeed, a
human sewing machine. With lightning quickness she fed the material to
the point of her needle, and every time she drew it through a score of
stitches would be made. Already the bed was heaped with work she had
finished, and a small table was also piled with stuff. A wardrobe, a
stove, and two chairs completed the furniture of the room.
But if I felt inclined to pity Frosine the feeling vanished on looking
into her face. It was so brave, so frank, so cheerful. There was
no beauty, but a piquant quality that almost made up for its lack.
Character, variety, appeal she had, and a peculiar fascinating quality
of redemption. Thus the beautiful teeth redeemed the rather large
mouth; the wide-set hazel eyes redeemed the short, irregular nose; the
broad well-shaped brow redeemed the somewhat soft chin. Her skin was
of a fine delicacy, one of those skins that seem to be too tightly
stretched; and constant smiling had made fine wrinkles round her mouth
and eyes.
“A female with an active sense of humour,” I thought. Anastasia’s sense
of humour was passive, Rougette’s somewhat atrophied. So Mademoiselle
Frosine smiled, and her smile was irresistible. It brought into
play all these fine wrinkles; it was so whole-hearted, so free from
reservations. That tonic smile would have made a pessimist burn his
Schopenhauer, and take to reading Elbert Hubbard.
“Mademoiselle,” I began in my fumbling French, “I have come to beg
a favour of you. You would be a thousand times amiable if you could
spare Solonge for an hour or two in the afternoon, to go with us to the
Luxembourg Gardens. There she may play in the sunshine, and it will
give my wife infinite gladness to watch her.”
Frosine almost dropped her needle with pleasure. “Oh, you are so good.
It will be such a joy for my little one, and will make me so happy.
Madame loves children, does she not?”
“It is truly foolish how she loves them. She will be ravished if you
will permit us to have your treasure for a little while.”
“Ah, monsieur, you are entirely too amiable.”
“Not at all. It is well heard, then?”
“But, yes, certainly. You make me too happy.”
“Ah, well! this afternoon at three o’clock?”
“At three o’clock.”
So I broke the news to Anastasia. “Little Thing, I’ve borrowed a baby
for you this afternoon. Solonge is coming with us to the gardens.”
(Really, if I had given her a new hat she could not have been more
enchanted.)
“Oh, that will be lovely! Then will I have my two childrens with me.
You don’t know how I am glad.”
So we gaily descended the timeworn stairs, and found the youngster
eagerly awaiting us. In her navy blue coat and hat her wealth of long
hair looked fairer and silkier than ever. For a child of four and
a half she was very tall and graceful. Then we bade the mother _au
revoir_, and with the youngster chattering excitedly as she held the
hand of Anastasia, and me puffing at the cheap briar I had bought in
the place of the ill-fated meerschaum, we started out.
“I suppose if it hadn’t been for Solonge,” I observed, “Frosine would
have thrown up the sponge long ago. How awful to be alone day after
day, sewing against time, so to speak; and that for all one’s life!”
“Oh, no. There is many girl like that in Paris. They work till they
die. They are brought up in the _couvent_. That make them very serious.”
Anastasia had certainly the deepest faith in her religion.
After its long winter _relâche_ the glorious old garden was awakening
to the symphony of Spring. The soft breeze that stirred the opening
buds came to us laden with fragrance, arousing that so exquisite
feeling of sweet confused memory that only the Spring-birth can evoke.
The basin of the Fontaine de Médicis was stained a delicate green by
peeping leaves, and a flock of fat sparrows with fluttering feathers
and joyous cries were making much ado. We sat down on one of the stone
benches, because the pennies for the chairs might buy many needful
things.
That dear, dear garden of the Luxembourg, what, I wonder, is the secret
of its charm? Is it that it is haunted by the sentiment and romance of
ages dead and forgotten? Beautiful it is, yet other gardens are also
beautiful, and--oh, how different! Surely it should be sacred, sacred
to children, artists and lovers. There, under the green and laughing
leaf, where statues glimmer in marble or gloom in bronze, and the
fountain throws to the tender sky its exquisite aigrette of gold--there
the children play, the artists dream, and the lovers exchange sweet
kisses. Oh, Mimi and Musette, where the bust of Murger lies buried
in the verdure, listening to the protestations of your Eugene and
Marcel!--do you not dream that in this self-same spot your mothers in
their hours listened to the voice of love, nay, even _their_ mothers in
their hours. So over succeeding generations will the old garden cast
its spell, and under the branches of the old trees lovers in days to
come will whisper their vows. Yea, I think it is haunted, that dear,
dear garden of the Luxembourg.
Solonge, whom I had decided to call “The Môme,” had a top which she
kept going with a little whip. To start it she would wind the lash
of the whip around its point, then standing it upright in the soft
ground, give it a sharp jerk. But after a little she tired of this,
and began to ask questions about fairies. Never have I seen a child so
imaginative. Her world is peopled with fairies, with whom she holds
constant communion. There are tree fairies, water fairies, fairies that
live in the ground, fairies that lurk in the flowers--she can tell you
all about them. Her faith in them is touching, and brutal would he be
who tried to shatter it.
“You that make so many stories,” said Anastasia, as she listened to the
prattle of the Môme, “have you no stories for children? Can you not
make one for little Solonge?”
“Yes, of course, I might; but you will have to put it in French for
her.”
“All right. I try.”
So I thought a little, then I began:
Once upon a time there was a little boy who was very much alone and
who dreamed greatly. In his father’s garden he had a tiny corner of
his own, and in this corner grew a large pumpkin. The boy, who had
never seen a pumpkin so big, thought that it might take a prize at
the yearly show in the village, and so every day he fed it with milk,
and always with the milk of the brindled cow, which was richest of
all.
So the pumpkin grew and grew, and the little boy became so wrapt up
in it he thought of little else. At last it grew to such a size that
other people began to look at it, and say it would surely take a
prize. The little boy became more proud of it than ever, and fed it
more and more of the milk of the brindled cow, and took to rubbing it
till it shone--with his big brother’s silk handkerchief.
Then one night as he lay in bed he heard a great to-do in the
garden, and ran out in his night-dress. There was a patch of ground
where grew the pumpkins, and another where grew the squashes, and
both seemed greatly disturbed. Fearing for his favourite he hurried
forward. No, there it was, great and glossy in the moonlight. He
kissed it, and even as he did so it seemed as if he heard from within
it a tiny, tinny voice calling his name. In surprise he stepped back,
and the next moment a door opened in the side of the pumpkin and a
fairy stepped forth.
“I am the Pumpkin King,” said the fairy, “and in the name of the
Pumpkin People I bid you welcome.”
Then the boy saw that the inside of the great gourd was hollow, and
was lit with a wondrous chandelier of glow-worms. It was furnished
like a little chamber, with a bed, table, chairs--such a room as you
may see in a house for dolls. The boy wished greatly that he might
enter, and even as he wished he found that he had grown very small,
as small, indeed, as his own finger.
“Will you not enter?” asked the King with a smile of welcome.
So the boy and the King became great friends, and each night when
every one else was a-bed he would steal forth and sit in the chamber
of the Pumpkin King. The King thanked him for his care of the royal
residence, and told him many things of the vegetable world. But
chiefly he talked of the endless feud between the pumpkins and their
hereditary enemies, the squashes. Whenever the two came together
there was warfare, and when the squashes were more numerous the
pumpkins were often defeated. Yonder by the gate dwelt the Squash
King, a terrible fellow, of whom the Pumpkin King lived in fear.
“Can I not kill him for you?” said the little boy.
“No, no,” answered the King. “No mortal can destroy a fairy. Things
must take their course.”
At this the little boy was very sad, and began to dread all kinds of
dangers for his friend the King. Then one day he was taken ill with a
cold, and the window was closed at night so that he could not steal
out as usual. And as he lay tossing in his bed he heard a great noise
in the garden. At once he knew that a terrible battle was raging
between the squash and the pumpkin tribes. Alas! he could do nothing
to help his friends, so he cried bitterly.
And next morning his father came to his bedside and told him that all
the pumpkins had been destroyed, including his big one.
“It was that breechy brindled cow,” said the father. “It must have
broken into the garden in the night.”
But the little boy knew better.
As I finished a deep, strongly vibrating voice greeted us.
“What a pretty domestic scene. Didn’t know you had a youngster, Madden.
Must congratulate you.”
Looking up I saw Helstern. He was leaning on a stout stick, carved like
a gargoyle. All in black, with that mane of iron-grey hair and his
keen, stern face he made quite a striking figure. There is something
unconsciously dramatic about Helstern; I, on the other hand, am
consciously dramatic; while Lorrimer is absolutely natural.
“Sorry,” I said, “she doesn’t belong to us. We’ve just borrowed her for
the afternoon.”
“I see. What a beautiful type! English, I should imagine?”
“No, that’s what makes her so different--French.”
He looked at her as if fascinated.
“I’d like awfully to make a sketch of her, if you can get her to stand
still.”
At that moment there was no difficulty, for the Môme was gazing in
round-eyed awe at the ferocious Turk’s head pipe in the sculptor’s
mouth. So Helstern took a chair, whipped out his sketch-book, and
before the fascinated child could recover he had completed a graceful
little sketch.
“Splendid!” I said.
Anastasia, too, was enthusiastic; but when the Môme, who was now
nestling in her arms, saw it she uttered a scream of delight.
“If you just sit still a little,” said Helstern eagerly, “while I do
another one for myself, I’ll give you this one to take home to your
mother.”
The Môme was very timid; but we posed her sitting on the end of the
stone seat, with one slim leg bent under her and the other dangling
down, while she scattered some crumbs for the fat sparrows at her feet.
Against the background of a lilac bush she made a charming picture,
and Helstern worked with an enthusiasm that made his eyes gleam, and
his stern face relax. This time he used a fine pencil of sepia tint,
working with the broad of it so as to get soft effects of shadow. True,
he idealised almost beyond resemblance; but what a delicate, graceful
picture he made!
“It isn’t such a good likeness as the first one,” I remarked, after I
had murmured my admiration.
“Ah!” he said, with the pitying superiority of the artist. “But you
don’t see her as I see her.”
There, I thought, is Art in a nutshell; the individual vision, the
divination of the soul of things, hidden inexorably from the common
eye. To see differently; a greener colour in the grass, a deeper blue
in the sky, a madonna in a woman of the street, an angel in a child,
God in all things--oh, enchanted Vision! they who have thee should be
happier than kings.
“There, little one!” said the sculptor, giving her the first sketch;
“take that to your mother and say I said she should be very proud of
you. Heavens, I wish I could do a clay figure of her. I wish--”
He looked at her in a sort of ecstasy, sighed deeply, then stumped away
looking very thoughtful.
“Is he not distinguished,” I said, “in spite of that foot of his?”
“Ah! that is so sad, I sink. But perhaps it is for the best he have
foot like that. It make him more serious; it make him great artist.”
Trust Anastasia to find some compensation in all misfortune!
Frosine was plying that lightning needle when we returned. She looked
up joyfully as the little one rushed to her with the sketch.
“Who did this? It is my little pigeon--truly, it is her very self.”
“It was a friend of ours,” said Anastasia, “who is a great sculptor,
or, at least, who is going to be. He has fallen in love with your
daughter, as indeed we all have.”
“Oh, it is so good of you to take her out. Already I see a difference
in her. I would not have her grow up like the children of the streets,
and it is so hard when one is poor and has to work every moment of
one’s time. As for this picture, thank the Monsieur. Say I will
treasure it.”
We promised to do so, and left her singing gaily by the open window as
she resumed her everlasting toil.
So it has come about that nearly every afternoon we sit in the
Luxembourg enjoying the mellow sunshine, with the little girl playing
around us. We know many people by sight, for the same ones come day
after day. There by the terrace of the Queens we watch the toy yachts
careening in the basin, the boys playing diabolo, the sauntering
students with their sweethearts. Anastasia works industriously on
some Spanish embroidery, I read for the twentieth time one of my
manuscripts, while the Môme leaps and laughs as she keeps a shuttlecock
bounding in the air. Her eyes are very bright now, and her delicate
cheeks have a rosy stain. Then, when over the great trees the Western
sky is aglow, when the fountain turns to flame, and a charmed light
lingers in the groves, slowly we go home. Days of grateful memory, for
in them do I come to divine the deepest soul of Paris, that which is
Youth and Love.
CHAPTER VI
GETTING DOWN TO CASES
“Anastasia,” I said with a sigh, “did I ever tell you of Gwendolin?”
“No; what is it?” she asked, and her face had rather an anxious
expression.
“Gwendolin was a girl, a very nice girl, a trained nurse; and we were
engaged.”
“What you mean? She was your _fiancée_?”
“Yes, she was one of my _fiancées_.”
“What! You have more than one?” The poor girl was really horrified.
“Oh, several. I don’t just remember how many. I quarrelled with one
because we couldn’t agree over the name we would give the first baby.
I broke it off with another because her stomach made such funny noises
every time I tried to squeeze her. It made me nervous. But Gwendolin--I
must tell you about her. I was very ill with diphtheria in a lonely
house by the sea, and she had come to nurse me. She would let no one
else come near me, and she waited on me night and day.”
(Anastasia suspended operations on the heel of my sock she was darning.)
“She was a nervous, high-strung girl, and she watched over me with an
agony of care. There was a doctor, too, who came twice a day, yet, in
spite of all, I hourly grew more weak. My dreary moans seemed to be
echoed by the hollow moans of the sea.”
(Anastasia seemed divided between resentment of Gwendolin and pity for
me.)
“Well, the poor girl was almost worn to a shadow, and one night, as she
sat by me, pale and hollow-eyed, I saw a sudden change come over her.
“‘I can stand it no longer,’ she cried. ‘His every moan pierces me to
the heart. I must do something, something.’
“Then she rose, and I was conscious of her great, pitiful eyes.
Suddenly I thrilled with horror, for I realised that they were the eyes
of a mad woman. The strain of nursing had unhinged her mind.
“‘The doctor tells me there is no hope,’ she went on. ‘Oh, I cannot
bear to hear him suffer so; I must give him peace;--but how?’
“On a table near by there was a small pair of scissors. She took them
up thoughtfully.
“‘Dearest,’ she said to me, ‘your sufferings will soon be over. I am
going to cut your poor throat, that gives you such pain.’
“I struggled, twisting my head this way and that, but she held me like
a vice, and over my throat I felt two edges of cold steel.”
(Anastasia was gazing in horror.)
“Steadily they closed, tighter, tighter. Now I could feel them bite
the flesh and the blood spout. Then I, who for days had been unable to
utter a word, suddenly found my voice.
“‘Don’t butcher me,’ I whispered hoarsely. ‘Cut my accursed throat by
all means, but do it neatly. Your scissors are far too blunt.’
“‘But how may I sharpen them, darling?’ she cried piteously.
“I remembered how I had seen other women do it.
“‘Try to cut on the neck of a bottle.’
“‘Will that do?’
“‘Yes, yes. Keep cutting on the smooth round glass. It’s astonishing
the difference it makes.’
“‘What kind of a bottle, sweetheart?’
“‘An ink-bottle’s best. You’ll find one downstairs on the dining-room
mantelpiece. Hurry.’
“‘All right, I’ll get it.’
“She flew downstairs. Now was my chance. With my remaining strength I
crawled to the door and locked it. When I recovered from a faint her
struggles to force it had ceased, and at the same moment I heard the
honk of the doctor’s auto. Going to the window, I bellowed like a bull.
Then I was conscious of a strange thing: by the pressure on my throat,
by my struggles, the malignant growth had broken. I was saved.”
Anastasia shuddered. “And that Gwendolin?” she queried.
“Was taken to an asylum, where she died,” I said sadly.
“Poor sing,” said Anastasia.
To tell the truth, the whole thing had happened to me the night before
in a very vivid dream. Often, indeed, I get ideas in this way, so I
promptly made a story of Nurse Gwendolin.
I was putting the finishing touches to it when a knock came to the
door. It was Helstern, panting, perspiring.
“Heavens! but it’s hard climbing that stairway of yours with a game
leg. Sorry to disturb you, Madden, but where does the mother of your
little girl live? You don’t know how that youngster inspires me. I
feel that if I could do a full-length of her it would get me into the
Salon. See! here’s a sketch. _Spring_, it’s called. Of course, I mean
to follow up with the other seasons, but I want a child for my Spring.”
He showed me a tender _fillette_ in a state of nature, trying to avoid
tripping over a tame lamb as she scattered abroad an armful of flowers.
“Stunning!” I said. “So original! Let’s go down and interview the
mother.”
Into his brown eyes came a look of distress. “I’m a bit awkward with
women, you know. Would you mind doing the talking?”
“Right O! Follow me.”
So we descended the narrow, crumbling stairs, from each stage of which
came a smell of cookery. Thus we passed through a stratum of ham and
eggs, another of corned beef and cabbage, a third of beefsteak and
onions, down to the fried fish stratum of the _entresol_.
Frosine was in the midst of dinner. The Môme regarded us over a
spoonful of milk soup, and as he wiped the perspiration from his
brow, Helstern looked at her almost devouringly. But in the presence
of Frosine he seemed almost tongue-tied. To me, who have never known
what shyness was, it seemed pitiable. However I explained our mission,
and even showed the sketch at a flattering angle. Frosine listened
politely, seemed to want to laugh, then turned to the sculptor with
that frank, kindly smile that seemed to radiate good fellowship.
“You do me too great honour, Monsieur. I am sure your work would be
very beautiful. But alas! Solonge is very shy and very modest. One
could never get her to pose for the figure. I am sorry, but believe
me, the thing is impossible.”
“Thank you, Madam. I am sorry too,” he said humbly. He stumped away
crestfallen, and with a final, sorrowful look at the Môme.
Anastasia was keeping supper hot for me. “Poor Helstern,” I remarked
over my second chop, “I’m afraid he’ll have to look out for another
vernal infant. But talking of Spring reminds me, time is passing, and
we’re not getting any richer. How’s the family treasury?”
An examination of the tea-canister that contained our capital revealed
the sum of twenty-seven francs. I looked at it ruefully.
“I never dreamed we were so low as that. With care we can live for a
week on twenty-seven francs--but what then?”
“You must try and sell some of your work, darleen; and I--I can sell
some _hem-broderie_.”
“Never! I can’t let you sell those things. They’re lovely. I want to
keep them.”
“But I easily do some more. It is pleasure for me.”
“No, no; at least, hold on a bit. I’ll make some money from my work.
I’m going to send it off to-morrow.”
Yes, we were surely “getting down to cases.” But what matter! Of course
my work will be accepted at once, and paid for on the spot. True,
I have no experience in this kind of peddling. My stuff has always
appeared virgin in a book. Not that I think I am prostituting it by
sending it to a magazine, but that no sooner do I see it in print than
my interest in it dies. It belongs to the public then.
Next day I bought a box of big envelopes, a quantity of French and
English stamps, and a manuscript book in which I entered the titles of
the different items. I also ruled columns: Where Sent: When Sent; even
When Returned, though I thought the latter superfluous. Here then was
my list:
The Psychology of Sea-sickness.
An Amateur Lazzarone.
A Detail of Two Cities.
The Microbe.
How to be a Successful Wife.
Nurse Gwendolin.
The City of Light.
The City of Laughter.
The City of Love.
and
Three Fairy Stories.
Twelve items in all. So I prepared them for despatch; but where? That
was the question. However, after examining the windows of several
English book-shops, I took a chance shot, posted them to twelve
different destinations, and sat down to await results.
Since then, with a fine sense of freedom, I have been indulging in my
mania for old houses. I do not mean houses of historic interest, but
ramshackle ruins tucked away in seductive slums. To gaze at an old
home and imagine its romance is to me more fascinating than trying
to realise romance you know occurred there. I examine doors studded
with iron, search mouldering walls for inscriptions, peer into curious
courtyards. I commune with the spirit of Old Paris, I step in the
footprints of Voltaire and Verlaine, of Rousseau and Racine, of
Mirabeau and Molière.
One day I visit the room where an English Lord of Letters died more
deaths than one. A gloomy, gruesome hotel, with an electric night-sign
that goes in and out like some semaphore of sin. A cadaverous,
miserable-looking man tells me that the room is at present occupied.
I return. A cadaverous, miserable-looking woman whines to a dejected
looking valet-de-chambre that I may go up.
It is on the first floor and overlooks a court. There is the bed of
varnished pine in which he died; the usual French hotel wardrobe, the
usual plush armchair, but not, I note, the usual clock of chocolate
marble. Everything so commonplace, so sordid; yet for a moment I could
see that fallen demi-god, as with eyes despairful as death in their
tear-corroded sockets, he stared and stared into that drab, rain-sodden
court.
For who can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
And so in sweet, haphazard wanderings amid the Paris of the Past time
sped ever so swiftly. I forgot my manuscripts, my position, everything
in my sheer delight of freedom; and how long my dream would have
continued I know not if I had not had a sudden awakening. It was on my
return from one of my rambles when I drew up with a start in front of a
shop that showed all kinds of woman’s work for sale.
“Heavens! Surely that isn’t Anastasia’s cushion?”
I was staring at a piece of exquisite silk embroidery, an imitation of
ancient tapestry. No, I could not be mistaken. Too well I remembered
every detail of it; how I had watched it take on beauty under her
patient fingers; how hour after hour I could hear the crisp snap as the
needle broke through the taut silk. Over a week had she toiled on it,
rising with the first dawn, so that she might have more daylight in
which to blend her colours. And there it was, imbedded in that mass of
cheap stuff, and marked with a smudgy paper, “Forty-five francs.” Yes,
I felt sick.
How careless I had been! I had never given the financial situation
another thought, yet we had wanted for nothing. There was that
excellent dinner we had had the night before; why, she must have sold
this to buy it! Even now I was living on the proceeds of her work.
“What a silly girl! She wouldn’t say a word, in case I should be
worried. Just like women; they take a fiendish delight in humiliating a
man by sacrificing themselves for him. But I can’t let her support me.
Let’s see.... There’s my watch and chain. What’s a chain but a useless
gaud, a handhold for a pick-pocket. Maybe this very afternoon I’ll have
the whole thing snatched. I’ll take no chances; it’s a fine, heavy
chain, and cost over a hundred dollars; maybe the Mont de Pietists will
give me fifty for it.”
They wouldn’t. Twenty-five was their limit, so I took it meekly.
Then, returning hastily to the embroidery shop, I bought the cushion
cover, carried it home under my coat, and locked it safely away in the
alligator-skin suitcase.
Though her greeting was bravely bright, it seemed to me that Anastasia
had been crying, and of the nice omelette she had provided for my lunch
she would scarcely taste.
“What’s the trouble, Little Thing; out with it.”
She hesitated; looked anxious, miserable, apologetic.
“I don’t like trouble you, darleen, but the _concierge_ have come for
the rent tree time, and I don’t know what I must say.”
“The rent! I quite forgot that. Why, yes, we pay rent, don’t we? How
much is it?”
“Don’t you remember? One ’undred twenty-five franc.”
“Well, there’s only one thing to do--pay it. But to do so I must put my
ticker up the spout.”
“Oh, my poor darleen, I’m so sorry. I sink it is me bring you so much
trouble. If it was not for me you have plenty of money, I sink.”
“Don’t say that. If it wasn’t for your economies I’d be rustling for
crusts in the gutter. And anyway, what’s the good of a watch when I can
see the time in every shop I pass? Besides, I might lose it; so here
goes.”
It is quite in tune with the cheerful philosophy of the French to find
a virtue in misfortune. Whether they break a glass, spill red wine, or
step in dirt, it’s all the same: “Ah! but it will carry the good luck.”
For my gold watch I received two hundred francs, though it had cost
over a thousand; and with this I returned. Much the shape and colour of
a bloated spider, the _concierge_ emerged from her den, and to her I
paid the rent. Then, leaping upstairs, I poured the balance remaining
from both transactions into Anastasia’s lap.
“There! That ought to keep away the wolf for a month. A hundred and
fifty francs and the rent paid for another quarter. Aren’t we the lucky
things? The roof’s overhead; the soup’s in the pot; let’s sing. Now do
I know why the very wastrels in the street are not so much to be pitied
after all; a warm corner and a full belly, that’s happiness to them.
Wealth’s only a matter of wants. Well, we’re wealthy, let’s go to the
cinema.”
“No, darleen, that would not be serious. I must guard your money now.
When you sink you begeen work once more?”
“I don’t know. I’m having one of my bad spells. Funny how it takes one.
Times ideas come in a perfect spate, and I miss half grabbing for the
others. At present the divine afflatus is on a vacation. I’m trying to
start a novel and I haven’t got the Idea. You see this short story and
article stuff is all very well to boil the _marmite_, but a novel’s my
real chance. A successful novel would put me on my feet. Pray, Little
Thing, I get the idea for a novel.”
“Yes, I will, I will indeed,” she answered me quite seriously.
And indeed she did: for one day I strolled into Notre Dame, and there
by one of those hard, high-backed chairs before the mighty altar I
discovered her imploring (I have no doubt) the “bon Dieu” that the idea
might come.
For simple, shining faith I’m willing to bet my last dollar on
Anastasia.
CHAPTER VII
THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY
_May 1st._
This morning in the course of my walk I saw a hungry child trying to
sell violets, a girl gazing fearfully at the Maternity Hospital, an
old woman picking, as if they were gold, coals from the gutter. At
times what a world of poignant drama these common sights reveal! It is
like getting one’s eye to a telescope that is focussed on a world of
interesting misery. I want to write of these things, but I must not.
First of all I must write for money; that gained, I may write for art.
So far I haven’t hit on my novel _motif_, though I’ve lain awake at
nights racking my poor brains. What makes me fret so is that never have
I felt such confidence, such power, such hunger to create. I think it
must be Paris and the Springtime. The combination makes me dithyrambic
with delight. I thrill, I burn, I see life with eyes anointed.
Yesterday in the Luxembourg I wrote some verses that weren’t half bad;
but writing verses does not make the thorns crackle under the pot, far
less supply the savoury soup. Oh, the Idea, the Idea!
To my little band of manuscripts I have never given another thought.
But that is my way. I am like a mother cat--when my kittens are young I
love them; when they grow to be cats I spit at them. My work finished,
I never want to see it again.
One day as I fumed and fussed abominably Lorrimer called.
“Look here, Madden, I don’t know what kind of writing you do, but I
suppose you’re not any too beastly rich; you’re not above making an
honest dollar. Now, I’m one of the future gold medallists of the Spring
Salon, _cela va sans dire_, but in the meantime I’m not above doing
this.”
“This” was a paper covered booklet of a flaming type. I took it with
some disfavour. The paper was muddy, the type disreputable, the
illustrations lurid. Turning it over I read:
THE MARVELLOUS PENNYWORTH LIBRARY OF WORLD ADVENTURE.
“Pretty rotten, isn’t it?” said Lorrimer. “Well, you wouldn’t believe
it, some of these things sell to nearly quarter of a million. They give
the best value for the money in their line. Fifty pages of straight
adventure and a dozen spirited illustrations for a humble copper; could
you beat it?”
“Well, what’s it got to do with me?”
“It’s like this: I’ve been guilty of the illustrations of two of these
masterpieces. They were Wild West stories. Being an American, though
I’ve never lived out of Connecticut, I’m supposed to know all about
Colorado. Well, it’s the firm of Shortcake & Hammer that publish them,
and I happened to meet young Percy Shortcake when he was on a jamboree
in Paris. Over the wassail we got free, so he promised to put some
work my way. Soon after I got a commission to illustrate _Sureshot, or
the Scout’s Revenge_; then some months after I adorned the pages of
_Redhand the Nightrider, or the Prowler of the Prairies_.”
“I see. What’s the idea now?”
“The idea is that you write one of these things and I illustrate it.”
“My dear fellow, you have too high an opinion of my powers.”
“Oh, come now, Madden, try. You won’t throw me down, old man. I need
the money. Supposing we place it we’ll get a ten pound note for it;
that will be seven for you and three for me. Three pounds, man, that
will keep me for a month, give me time to finish my prize picture
for the Salon. Just think what it means to me, what a crisis in my
fortunes. Fame there ready to crown me, and for the want of a measly
three quid, biff! there she chucks her crown back in the laurel bin for
another year. Oh, Madden, try. I’m sure you could rise to the occasion.”
Thus approached, how could a kind-hearted Irishman refuse? Already I
saw Lorrimer gold-medalled, glorified; then the reverse of the picture,
Lorrimer writhing in the clutches of dissipation and despair. Could I
desert him? I yielded.
“Good!” whooped Lorrimer; “we’ll make a best-seller in Penny-dreadfuldom.
Take _Sureshot_ here as a model. Here, too, are your illustrations.”
“My what?”
“The pictures. Oh, yes, I did them first. It doesn’t make any
difference, you can make them fit in. It’s often done that way. Half
the books published for Christmas sale are written up to illustrations
that the publishers have on hand.”
“All right. The illustrations may suggest the story.”
Lorrimer went away exultant. After all, I thought, seven pounds won’t
be bad for a week’s work. So I read _Sureshot_ with some care. It was
divided into twenty chapters of about a thousand words each, and every
chapter finished on a situation of suspense. The sentences were jerkily
short; each was full of pith and punch, and often had a paragraph all
to itself. For example:
By one hand Sureshot clung to that creaking bough. Below him was
empty space. Above him leered his foe, Poisoned Pup, black hate in
his face.
The branch cracked ominously.
With a shudder the Lone Scout looked down to the bottom of the abyss.
No way of escape there. He looked up once more, and even as he looked
Poisoned Pup raised his tomahawk to sever the frail branch.
“Perish! Paleface,” he hissed; “go down to the Gulf of the Lost Ones,
and let the wolves pick clean your bones.”
Sureshot felt that his last hour had come.
“Accursed Redskin,” he cried, “do your worst. But beware, for I will
be avenged. And now, O son of a dog, strike, strike!”
And there with gleaming eyes the intrepid scout waited for that
glittering axe to fall.
End of chapter; the next of which artfully switches, and takes up
another thread of the story.
The result of my effort was that in six days I produced _Daredeath
Dick, or the Scourge of the Sierras_. Lorrimer was enthusiastic.
“Didn’t think you had it in you, old man. I’ll get it off to Shortcake
& Hammer at once. It will likely be some weeks before we can hear from
them.”
Since then I have been seeing quite a lot of Lorrimer. After all, our
little apartment is cosiness itself, and beer at four sous a litre is
ambrosia within reach of the most modest purse. He talks vastly of
his work (with a capital W). He arrives with the announcement that he
has just dropped in for a quiet pipe; in an hour he must be back at
his Work. Then: “Well, old man, just another short pipe, and I must
really be off.” But in the end he takes his departure about two in the
morning, sometimes talking me asleep.
How he lives is a mystery. Any evening you can see him in the Café
d’Harcourt, or the Soufflet, and generally accompanied by Rougette.
When he is in funds he spends recklessly. Once he gained a prize for a
Moulin Rouge poster, and celebrated his success in a supper that cost
him three times the value of his prize. Sometimes he contributes a very
naughty drawing to _Pages Folles_, and I know that he does _aquarelles_
for the long-haired genius who sells them on the boulevards, and who,
though he can draw little else than a cork from a bottle, in appearance
out-rapins the _rapins_.
One afternoon I heard Helstern painfully toiling upstairs.
“I’ve got an idea,” he began. “You know as soon as I set eyes on the
mother of your little Solonge I saw she was just the type I’ve been
looking for for my group, Maternity. That woman’s a born mother, a
mother by destiny. See, here’s a sketch of my group.”
Helstern’s statues, I notice, seldom get beyond the sketch stage. This
one showed a mother suckling an infant and gazing fondly at another
little girl, who in her turn was looking maternally at the baby.
“That’s all very well,” I objected banally; “but Frosine hasn’t got a
baby.”
“Pooh! a mere trifle. I’ll soon supply the baby. Already I see my group
crowned in the Salon. The thing’s as good as done. It only remains for
you to go down and get the consent of Madam.”
“Me!”
“Why, yes. You know I’m no good at talking to women. It takes an
Irishman to be persuasive. Go on, there’s a good fellow.”
Was I ever able to resist an appeal to my vanity? But pretty soon I
returned rather crestfallen.
“It’s no use, old man. Can’t make anything of the lady. I showed
her your sketch; I offered to provide the infant; I pointed out the
sensation it would make in the Salon; no use. She positively refuses to
pose; prefers to sew lingerie. If she would be serious I might be able
to wheedle her; but she only laughs, and when a woman laughs I’ve got
to laugh with her. But I can’t help thinking there’s something at the
back of her refusal.”
“Well, well,” sighed the big sculptor, “I give her up. And already I
could see the crowds admiring my group as it stood under the dome of
the Grand Palace; already I could hear their plaudits ringing in my
ears; already....”
Once more he sighed deeply, and went away.
_May 15th._
It is so hot to-day that I think Summer must have taken the wrong cue.
On the Boul’ Mich’ the marronniers sicken in the stale air composed
equally of asphalt, petrol and escaping gas. Assyrian bearded students
and Aubrey Beardsley _cocottes_ are sitting over opaline glasses in
front of the stifling cafés, and the dolphins in the fountains of
the Observatory spout enthusiastically. Now is the time to loll on a
shaded bench in the Luxembourg Gardens, and refrain from doing anything
strenuous.
So I sit there dreaming, and note in a careless way that I am becoming
conspicuously shabby. Because the necessary franc for the barber cannot
well be spared, I have allowed my hair to accumulate æsthetically.
Anastasia loves it like that--says it makes me look like the great man
of letters I am; and with a piece of silk she has made me a Lavallière
tie. More than ever I feel like a character in a French farce.
My boots, I particularly note, need heeling. Every morning I
conscientiously brush them before I go out, but invariably I am called
back.
“Show me your feet.”
I bow before this domestic tyrant.
“Oh, what a dirty boy it is. What shame for me to have husbands go out
like that.”
“But look!” I protest; “they’re clean. They shine like a mirror. Why,
you can see your face in them--if you look hard enough.”
“But the heels! Look at the heels. Why you have not brush them. Oh, I
nevaire see child like that. You just brush in front.”
“Well, how can I see the heels? I’m no contortionist.”
“Oh, _mon Dieu_! He brush his boots after he puts them on. Oh, what a
cabbage head I have for husband!”
“Well, isn’t that the right way?”
“_Nom d’un chien!_ Give me your _patte_.”
Then what a storm if I try to go out with a hole in my socks!
“Oh, dear! I nevaire see man like that. Suppose you get keel in the
street, and some one take off your boots, sink how you are shamed. What
shame for me, too, if I have husbands keel wiz hole in his sock!”
In addition to her other duties I have made her my Secretary. Alas! I
must confess some of my valiant manuscripts have come sneaking back
with unflattering promptitude. It is a new experience and a bitter one.
Yet I think my chief concern is that Anastasia’s faith in me should be
shattered. After the first unbelieving moment I threw the things aside
in disgust.
“They’re no good. I’ll never send them out again.”
“Oh, don’t say that, darleen. You geeve to me and I send away some
more.”
“Do what you like,” I answered savagely. “But don’t let me see the
beastly things again. And don’t,” I added thoughtfully, “send them
twice to the same place.”
So what is happening I know not, though the expense for stamps is a
grievous one. She has a list of periodicals and is posting the things
somewhere. Perhaps she may blunder luckily. Anyway, I don’t care. I’m
sick of them.
_May 30th._
Some days ago I was sitting by the gate of the Luxembourg that fronts
the bust of St. Beuve. That fine, shrewd face seemed to smile at me
with pawky kindliness, as if to say: “Don’t despair, young men; seek,
seek, for the luminous idea will come.”
But just then it was more pleasant to dream than to seek. A slim pine
threw on the sun-flooded lawn its purple pool of shadow; in the warm
breeze a thickset yew heaved gently; a lively acacia twinkled and
fluttered; a silver-stemmed birch tossed enthusiastic plumes. Over a
bank of golden lilies bright-winged butterflies were hovering, and in
a glade beyond there was a patch of creamy hyacinths. Against the ivy
that mantled an old oak, the white dress of a girl out-gleamed, and her
hat, scarlet as a geranium, made a sparkling note of colour.
Then, as she drew near I saw it was Anastasia, and she was much
excited. I wondered why. Is there anything in this world, I asked
myself, worth while getting excited about? Just then I was inclined to
think not; so I smoked on imperturbably. The vacuum in my life made by
the lack of tobacco had been more than I could bear, and I had taken to
those cheap packets of Caporal, _cigarettes bleues_, whose luxuriant
whiskers I surreptitiously trimmed with Anastasia’s embroidery
scissors. Never shall I be one of those kill-joys who recommend young
men not to smoke--in the meantime filling up their own pipes with
particular gusto.
“Hullo, Little Thing! Why this unexpected pleasure?”
“Oh, I search you everywhere. See! There’s letter from editor.”
“So it is; and judging by your excitement it must contain at least
twenty pounds. Already I wallow in the sands of Pactolus.... Yes,
you’re right: A cheque. How long it seems since I’ve seen a cheque!
Let’s see--why! it’s for a whole guinea.”
Her eyes gleamed with pleasure, and she clapped her hands.
“In payment,” I went on, “of the article _How to be a Successful Wife_,
from the editor of _Baby’s Own_ a weekly Magazine specially devoted to
the Nursery.”
“Yes, yes. I send heem zere. I sink it’s so _chic_, that magazine.”
“Well, I congratulate you on your first success as a literary agent.
You deserve your ten per cent. commission. It isn’t the Eldorado of
our dreams, but it will enable us to carry out some needed sartorial
reforms. For example, I may now get my boots persuaded to a new lease
of life, while you can buy some stuff for a blouse. How much can we do
on twenty-six francs?”
Between Necessary Expenditure and Cash in Hand the difference was
appalling, but after elaborate debate the money was duly appropriated.
From this time on Anastasia became more energetic than ever in her
consumption of postage. It was about this time, too, I noticed she ate
very sparingly. On my taxing her, she declared she was dieting. She was
afraid, she said, of getting fat. On which I decided I also was getting
fat: I, too, must diet. Every one, we agreed, ate too much. I for one
(I vowed) could do better work on a mess of pottage than on all the
fleshpots of Egypt. So the expenses of our ménage began to take a very
low figure indeed.
At the same time “Soup of the Onion” began to make its appearance with
a monotonous frequency. It is made by frying the fragments of one of
these vegetables till it is nearly black. You then add hot water, boil
a little, strain. The result is a warm, yellowish liquor of onionish
suggestion, which an ardent imagination may transform into a delicate
and nourishing soup--and which costs about one sou.
A sudden reversion, however, to a more generous _cuisine_ aroused
my suspicion, and, on visiting the little embroidery shop, again I
saw some of her work. I made a rapid calculation. Of my personal
possessions there only remained to me my gold signet ring, and the seal
that had hung at the end of my chain. For the first I got fifty francs,
for the second, twenty. So for thirty francs I bought her work, and
locked it away with the cushion cover.
I am really beginning to despair, to think I shall have to give in. Oh,
the bitterness of surrender! All that is mulish in me revolts at the
thought. For myself rather would I starve than be beaten, but there is
the girl, she must not be allowed to suffer.
_May 31st._
This has been a happy day, such a happy day as never before have I
known. This morning Lorrimer burst into my apartment flourishing a
cheque for _The Scourge of the Sierras_. Shortcake & Hammer expressed
themselves as well pleased, and sent--not ten pounds but twelve.
“I tell you what!” cried the artist excitedly, “we’ve got to celebrate
your success as a popular author. We’ll spend the extra two pounds on a
dinner. We’ll ask Rougette and Helstern, and we’ll have it to-night in
the Café d’Harcourt.”
He is one of these human steam-rollers who crush down all opposition;
so that night we five met in the merriest café in the Boul’ Mich’.
Below its bizarre frescoes of student life we had our table, and
considering that four of us did not know where the next month’s rent
was coming from we were a notably gay party.
Oh, you unfortunates who dine well every day of your lives, little
do you guess the gastronomic bliss of those whose lives are one long
Lent! Never could you have vanquished, as we, that host of insidious
_hors-d’œuvres_; never beset as we that bouillon with the brown bread
drowned in it. How the crisp fried soles shrank in their shrimp sauce
at the spectacle of our devouring rage, and the _filet mignon_ hid in
fear under its juicy mushrooms! The salad of chicken and _haricots
verts_ seemed to turn still greener with terror, and, as it vanished in
total rout, after it we hurled a bomb of Neapolitan ice cream. And the
wine! How splendid to have all the Beaune one wants after a course of
“Château La Pompe!” And those two bottles of sunshine and laughter from
the vaults of Rheims--not more radiantly did they overflow than did our
spirits! And so sipping our _cafés filtre_, we watched the crowd and
all the world looked glorious.
The place had filled with the usual mob of students, models and
_filles-de-joie_, and the scene was of more than the usual gaiety.
The country had just been swept by a wave of military enthusiasm;
patriotism was rampant; the female orchestra perspired in its efforts
to be heard. Every one seemed to be thumping on tables with bocks, and
two hundred voices were singing:
“Encore un petit verre de vin pour nous mettre en route;
Encore un petit verre de vin pour nous mettre en train.”
Some one started Fragson’s _En avant, mes petits Gars_, and there was
more stamping, shouting and banging of bocks. Then the orchestra broke
into the melody for which all were longing:
“Allons, enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.”
All were up on their seats now, and the song finished in a furore of
enthusiasm.
The generous wine had affected us three men differently. Lorrimer was
loquacious, Helstern gloomy, while I was inclined to sleep.
“Bah!” Helstern was saying: “This fire and fury, what is it? A mask
to hide a desperate uneasiness. Poor France! There she is like some
overfat ewe; there is the Prussian Wolf waiting; but look! between them
the paw of the Lion.”[A]
He represented the fat ewe with the sugar bowl, the Wolf with the cream
jug, and laid his big hand in between.
“Poor France!” broke in the girls; Rougette was more brilliantly pretty
than ever, and her eyes flashed with indignation. Even the gentle
Anastasia was roused to mild resentment.
“Yes,” went on Helstern, “you’re a great race, but you’re too old.
You’ve got to go as they all went, Greece, Rome, Italy, Spain. England
will follow, then Germany, last of all Russia.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” broke in Lorrimer noisily, “don’t let him get on
the subject of International Destinies. What does it matter to us?
To-day’s the only time worth considering. Let’s think of our own
destinies: mine as the coming Gérôme, Helstern’s as the coming Rodin,
and Madden’s as the coming Sylvanus Cobb.”
But I did not heed him. Drowsy content had possession of me. “Seven
pounds,” I was thinking; “that means the sinews of war for another
month. Oh, if I could only get some kind of an idea for that novel!
What is Lorrimer babbling about now?”
“Marriage,” he was saying; “I don’t believe in marriage. The first year
people are married they are happy, the second contented, the third
resigned. There should be a new deal every three years. Why, if a
general dispensation of divorce were to be granted, half of the married
couples would break away so quick it would make your head swim.”
“Oh, Monsieur, you are shocking,” said Anastasia.
“What shocks to-day is a commonplace to-morrow. There will come a time
when the custom that condemns a couple to bore one another for life
will be considered a barbaric one. Why penalise people eternally for
the aberration of a season? Three year marriages would give life back
its colour, its passion, its romance. People so soon grow physically
indifferent to each other. Flavoured with domesticity kisses lose their
rapture.”
“You have the sentiments _épouventable_,” said Anastasia. “Wait till
you have marry.”
“Me! You’ll never see me in the valley of the shadow of matrimony.
Would you spoil a good lover by making an indifferent husband of him?
No, we never care for the things we have, and we always want those
we haven’t. If I were married to Helen of Troy I’d be sneaking side
glances at some little Mimi Pinson across the way. And by the same
token, Madam, keep your eye on that husband of yours, for even now he’s
looking pretty hard at some one else.”
And indeed I was, for there across the room was the girl from Naples,
Lucrezia Poppolini.
CHAPTER VIII
“TOM, DICK AND HARRY”
The partner who managed the forwarding department of the firm of Madden
& Company reported to the partner who represented its manufacturing end
that the editor of the _Babbler_ had accepted his story _The Microbe_,
for one of his weekly Tabloid Tales. A cheque was enclosed for three
guineas.
The manufacturing partner looked up in a dazed way from his manuscript,
tapped his mighty brain to quicken recollection of the story in
question, signified his approval, and bent again to his labours.
Being in the heart of a novel he dreaded distraction. These necessary
recognitions of every day existence made it harder for him to lift
himself back again into his world of dream.
However, in his sustained fits of abstraction he had a worthy ally in
the forwarding partner. Things came to his hand in the most magical
way, and his every wish seemed anticipated. It was as if the whole
scheme of life conspired to favour the flow of inspiration. Thus, when
he was quietly told that lunch was ready, and instead of eating would
gaze vacantly at the butter, there was no suggestion of his impending
insanity; neither, when he poured tea into the sugar basin instead of
into his cup, was there any demonstration of alarm.
On the other hand the forwarding partner might often have been
seen turning over the English magazines displayed in front of the
booksellers, and noting their office addresses. She was wonderfully
persistent, but wofully unfortunate. Even the New York-London article,
which the manufacturing partner had told her to send to the _Gotham
Gleaner_, had been returned. The editor was a personal friend of his,
and had the article been signed in his own name would probably have
taken it. As it was it did not get beyond a sub-editor.
“Throw the thing into the fire,” he said savagely when she told him;
but she promptly sent it to the Sunday Magazine section of the _New
York Monitor_. After that she was silent on the subject of returned
manuscripts.
* * * * *
I have forbidden Anastasia to sell any more embroidery, so that she no
longer spends long and late hours over her needle. Instead she hovers
about me anxiously, doing her work with the least possible commotion.
I have given her the forty francs remaining from the sale of my seal
and ring, and that, with the three guineas from the _Babbler_, is
enough to carry us on for another month. It is extraordinary how we
just manage to scrape along.
I wish to avoid all financial worry just now. My story has taken hold
of me and is writing itself at the rate of three thousand words a day.
No time now to spend on meticulous considerations of style; as I try to
put down my teeming thoughts my pencil cannot travel fast enough. It
is the same frenzy of narration with which I rattled off _The Haunted
Taxicab_ and its fellow culprits. If at times that newborn conscience
of mine gives me qualms, I dull them with the thought that it is just a
tale told to amuse and--oh, how I need the money!
And now to come to my novel, _Tom, Dick and Harry_.
Three cockney clerks on a ten days’ vacation, are tramping over a
desolate moor in Wales. Tom is a dreamer with a turn for literature;
Dick an adventurer who hates his desk; Harry an entertainer, with
remote designs on the stage.
The scenery is wild and rugged. The road winds between great boulders
that suggest a prehistoric race. The wind of the moor brings a glow to
their cheeks, and their pipes are in full blast. Suddenly outspeaks Tom:
“Wouldn’t it be funny, you fellows, if a man clad in skins were
suddenly to dodge out from behind one of these rocks, and we were to
find that we were back in the world of a thousand years ago--just as we
are now, you know, with all our knowledge of things?”
“It wouldn’t be funny at all,” said Dick. “How could we make use of our
knowledge? What would we do for a living?”
“Well,” said Tom thoughtfully, “I think I would go in for the prophecy
business. I could foretell things that were going to happen, and--yes,
I think I’d try my hand at literary plagiarism. With all my reading I
could rehash enough modern yarns to put all the tribal story-tellers
out of business. I’d become the greatest yarn-spinner in the world.
What would you do, Hal?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’d have any trouble,” said Harry. “I’d become the
King’s harper. I think I could vamp on the harp all right. I’d revive
all the popular songs of the last ten years, all the minstrel songs,
all the sentimental ballads, all the national airs, and I’d set them
to topical words. I’d become the greatest minstrel in the world. Now,
Dick, it’s your turn.”
Dick considered for so long that they fancied he was at a loss. At last
he drew a deep breath.
“I know--I’d discover America.”
They thought no more about it, and next day went gaily a-climbing a
local mountain. But Tom, who was a poor climber, lagged behind his
companions, and began to slip. Clawing frantically at the rough rock
over the edge of the bluff he went, and fell to the bottom with a crash.
When he opened his eyes his head ached horribly. Putting up his hand he
found his scalp clotted with blood. The heavy mist shut off everything
but a small circle all round him. As he lay wondering what had become
of his companions, suddenly he became aware of strange people regarding
him. Gradually they came nearer and he saw that they were clad in skins.
Well, they take him prisoner and carry him off to their village, where
their head-man questions him in an uncouth dialect. Then they send for
a sage who also questions him, and is much mystified at his replies.
“This wise greybeard,” thinks Tom, “seems to know less than an average
school-boy.”
Then comes the news that two more of the strange creatures have been
captured. Once again the trio are united.
“It’s a rum go,” said Dick. “Seems we’ve slipped back a thousand
years.”
“What particular period of history have we climbed off at?” demanded
Harry.
“It looks to me,” said Tom, “as if we were in Saxon England, just
before the Norman Invasion. From what the old gentleman tells me Harold
is the big chief.”
“What will we do?”
“Seems to me we’ll be all right. With a thousand years or so of
experience ahead of those fellows we ought to become great men in this
land. We were mighty small fry in old London. I wish I was an engineer,
I’d invent gunpowder or something.”
“We’d better carry out our original plans,” said Dick.
By and by came messengers from the king, who wished to see these
strange beings descended on his earth from a star. And, indeed, it
seemed to the three friends as if they had really dropped on some
planet a thousand years less advanced than ours (for given similar
beginnings and conditions, will not history go on repeating itself?).
In any case, the king received them with wonder and respect, and
straightway they were attached to the royal household.
Gradually they adapted themselves to mediæval ways, became accustomed
to sleeping on straw, and to eating like pigs; but even to the last
they did not cease to deplore the absence of small-tooth combs in the
toilet equipment of the royal family.
The book goes on to trace the fortunes of each of its three heroes. It
tells how Harry captivated the court with a buck-and-wing dance, set
them turkey-trotting to the strains of “Hitchy Koo,” and bunny-hugging
to the melody of “Down the Mississippi.” He even opened a private
class for lessons in the Tango, and initiated Tango Teas in which
mead replaced the fragrant orange pekoe. He invented the first banjo,
demoralised the court with the first ragtime. You should have heard
King Harold joining in the chorus of “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,”
or singing as a solo “You Made Me Love You.” Decidedly Harry bid fair
to be the most popular man in the kingdom.
But Tom was running him a pretty close race. He had become the Royal
Story-teller, and nightly held them breathless while he thrilled them
with such marvels as horseless chariots, men who fly with wings, and
lightning harnessed till it makes the night like day. Yet when he
hinted that such things may even come to pass, what a howl of derision
went up!
“Ah, no!” cried King Harold, “these be not the deeds of men but of the
very gods.” And all the wise men of the land wagged their grey beards
in approval.
So after that he gave Truth the cold shoulder, and found fiction more
grateful. He reconstructed all the stock plots of to-day, giving them
a Saxon setting; and the characters that had taken the strongest hold
on the popular imagination he rehabilitated in Saxon guise. The most
childish tales would suffice. Night after night would he rivet their
attention with “Aladdin” or “Bluebeard,” or “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
Just as Harry had made all the minstrels rend their harp-strings, in
despair, so Tom made all the story-tellers blush with shame, and take
to the Hinterlands.
Poor Dick, however, was having a harder time of it. Like a man inspired
he was raving of a wonderful land many days sail beyond the sea. But
the stolid Saxons refused to believe him. “Fancy believing one who
says the world is round! Surely the man is mad.”
At last he fell in with some Danes who, seeing an opportunity for
piracy, agreed to let him be their pilot to this golden land. They
fitted out a vessel, and sailed away to the West. But they were
storm-driven for many days, and finally their boat was wrecked on the
Arran Islands.
In the meantime, William the Conqueror came on the scene, and King
Harold, refusing to listen to the warning of Tom, gave fight to
the Norman. Then Tom and Harry beheld with their modern eyes that
epoch-making battle.
“Oh, for a hundred men armed with modern rifles!” said Tom. “Then we
could conquer the whole world.”
But with the subjugation of the Saxon, dark days follow for the
three friends. Harry, trying to get a footing in the new court, and
struggling with the new language, is stabbed by a jealous court jester.
Dick, having escaped from the irate Danes, marries an Irish princess
and becomes one of the Irish kings. Tom, continuing to indulge in his
gift for prophecy, incurs the dislike of the Church and is thrown into
prison. Then one bright morning he is led to be executed. He lays his
head on the block. The executioner raises his axe. There is sudden
blankness....
“Yes, very interesting case,” he hears the doctor saying. “Fell thirty
feet. Came nasty whack on the rocks. We’ve trepanned ... expect him to
recover consciousness quite soon....”
* * * * *
One morning, about the beginning of July, I was leading Dick through
a whirl of adventure in the wilds of darkest Ireland, when Anastasia
entered. I looked at her blankly.
“Hullo! What’s wrong now?”
“Oh! I am desolate. Please excuse me for trouble you, darleen, but
there is no help for it. We have forget the rent, and once more it is
necessary to be paid.”
“Oh, the rent, the awful, inevitable rent! What a cursed institution it
is! Well, Little Thing, I’ve no money.”
“What we do, darleen?”
“It’s very unfortunate. I’m getting on so nicely with my novel, and
here I have to break off and worry over matters of sordid finance.”
“I’m so sorry. Let me sell some of my _hem-broderie_. I sink I catch
some money for that.”
“No, I hate to let you do that. Stop! We’ll compromise. Give me what
you have and I’ll put it ‘up the spout.’ It will be only for a little
while.”
So she gave me a cushion cover, two centre pieces, and some little mats.
“How much money is left?” I asked.
“Only about eleven franc.”
“Hum! That won’t help us much. All right. Leave it to me, and whatever
you do, don’t worry. I’ll raise the wind somehow.”
So I took the suitcase, with the pieces of embroidery I had previously
bought, and carried the whole thing to the Mont de Piété. I realised
seventy francs for the whole thing.
“There you are,” I said on my return. “With the eleven francs you have,
that makes eighty-one. You’d better pay the rent for one month only.
Then we will have forty francs left. We can struggle along on that for
two weeks. By that time something else will be sure to turn up.”
Something did turn up--the very next day. The editor of a cheap Weekly
who had already begun to make plans for his special Christmas number,
wrote and offered to take my diphtheria story if I would give it a
Christmas setting. I growled, and used shocking language, but in the
end I laid aside my novel and rechristening the story _My Terrible
Christmas_, I made the necessary changes. Result: another cheque for a
guinea.
How she managed to last out the balance of the month on an average of
two francs a day I never knew. I discontinued my morning walks, giving
all my time to my novel, and thinking of nothing else. I was dimly
conscious that once more we were in the “Soup of the Onion” zone, but
as I sat down dazed to my meals I scarce knew what I ate. I was all
keyed up, with my eyes on the goal. I would compose whole chapters in
my dreams, and sleeping or waking, my mind was never off my work.
Then came an evil week when the power of production completely left me.
How I cursed and fretted. I was sick of the whole trade of writing.
What a sorry craft! And my work was rotten. I hated it. A fog overhung
my brain. I saw the whole world with distempered eyes. I started out on
long walks around the fortifications, and as I walked everything seemed
to lose all sense of my identity. Yet the fresh air was good to me,
and the weaving of green leaves had a strange sweetness. The river,
too, soothed me; then one day all my interest in the world came back.
At six o’clock that evening I began to work, and all night through I
wrote like a madman. As I finished covering a sheet I would throw it
on the floor and grab a fresh one. I was conscious that my wrist ached
infernally. The dawn came and found me still writing, my face drawn, my
eyes staring vaguely. Then at eleven in the morning I had finished. I
was islanded in a sea of sheets, over twelve thousand words.
“Please pick them up for me,” I asked her. “I’m afraid it’s awful
stuff, but I just had to go on. Everything seemed so plain, and I just
wanted to get it down and out of my mind. Well, it’s done, my novel’s
done. See, I’ve written the sweetest of all words: Finis. But I’m so
tired. No, I don’t want any lunch. I’ll just lie down a bit.”
With a feeling of happiness that was like a flood of sunshine I crept
into bed, and there I slept till eight of the following morning. Next
day all I did was to loaf around the Luxembourg in the joyance of leaf
and flower. I was still fagged, but so happy. As I smoked a tranquil
pipe I watched the children on the merry-go-round. They were given
little spears, with which to tilt at rings hung round the course, and
if they bagged a certain number they were entitled to a seat for the
next round. To watch the rosy and eager faces of these youthful knights
on their fiery steeds, as they rode with lances couched, was a gentle
specific for the soul.
Yes, everything seemed so good, so bright, so beneficent. I loved that
picture full of freshness, gaiety and youth. Anastasia and the Môme
joined me, and we listened to the band under the marronniers. Then we
lingered on the Terrace of the Queen’s to watch the sky behind the
_Tower Eiffel_ kindle to a glow of amber, and a wondrous golden tide
o’erflooding the groves till each leaf seemed radiant and the fountain
exulted in a spray of flame.
Suddenly the Môme gave a cry of delight. Listen! In the distance we
could hear a noise like a hum of bees. It is the little soldier, who
every evening at closing time, parades the garden with his drum,
warning every one it is time to go. This to the children is the crown
of all the happy day. Hasten Sylvere and Yvonne--it is the little
soldier. Fall in line, Francois and Odette, we must march to the music.
Gather round Cyprille, Maurice, Victoire: follow to the rattle of the
drum. Here he comes, the little blue and red soldier. How sturdily he
beats! With what imperturbable dignity he marches amid that scampering,
jostling, laughing, shouting mob of merry-hearted children!
“After all,” I observe, “struggle, poverty and hard work give us
moments of joy such as the rich never know. I want to put it on record,
that though we are nearly at the end of our resources, this has been
one of the happiest days of my life.”
“I weesh you let me go to work, darleen. I make some money for help. I
sew for dressmaker if you let me.”
“Never. How near are we to the end?”
“I have enough for to-morrow only.”
“That’s bad.” I didn’t say any more. A gloom fell on my spirits.
“A letter for Monsieur,” said the concierge, as with heavy hearts and
slow steps we mounted to our rooms. I handed it to Anastasia.
“Open it, Little Thing; it’s in your department.”
She did so; she gave a little scream of delight.
“Look! It’s for that article I send to _New York Monitor_. He geeve you
cheque. Let me see.... Oh, _mon Dieu_! one hundred franc! good, good,
now we are save!”
I took it quickly.
“One hundred francs nothing,” I said. “Young woman, you’ve got to get
next to our monetary system. That’s not one hundred francs; that’s one
hundred dollars--_five_ hundred francs. Why, what’s the matter?”
For Anastasia had promptly fainted.
CHAPTER IX
AN UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT
I ascribed Anastasia’s fainting spell to the somewhat sketchy meals
we had been having; so for the next few weeks I fed her up anxiously.
That same evening we held a special meeting of the Finance Committee to
consider our improved position.
“Be under no illusion,” I observed as Chairman, “with reference to
our recent success. It is not, as you might imagine, the turn of the
tide. There are three reasons why this particular article was accepted:
First, it was snappy and up-to-date; second, it compared Manhattan and
Modern Babylon in a way favourable to the former; third, and chief
reason, the editor happened to have some very good cuts that he could
work in to make an attractive spread. Given these inducements, and a
temporary lack of more exciting matter, any offering can dispense with
such a detail as literary merit.”
Here I regarded some jottings I had made on an envelope.
“Let us now see how we stand. We started with twelve manuscripts, of
which we have sold four. There remain five more articles, and three
fairy stories. The articles I regard as time wasted. People won’t read
straight descriptive stuff; even in novels one has to sneak it in.”
Here the Secretary regarded ruefully some manuscripts rather the worse
for postal transit.
“Go on wasting stamps on them if you like,” I continued; “but,
candidly, they’re the wrong thing. As for the fairy stories, where are
they now?”
“I have sent them to the _Pickadeely Magazine_.”
“They might have some chance there. The editor devotes a certain space
to children that aren’t grown up. Now as to funds.”
The Secretary sat down, and the Treasurer rose in her place. She stated
that there were five hundred francs in the treasury, of which a hundred
would be needed to pay the rent up to the end of September. Two hundred
francs would have to be allowed for current expenses; that would leave
a hundred for contingencies.
“Very good,” I said; “I move that the money be expended as suggested.
And now--two blissful months of freedom from worry in which to re-write
my novel. Thank Heaven!”
With that I plunged into my work as strenuously as before. I must
confess I re-read it with a tremor. It was bad, but--not too bad.
Unconsciously I had reverted to my yarn-spinning style, yet often in
the white heat of inspiration I had hit on the master-word just as
surely as if I had pondered half a day. However, the result as a whole
I regarded with disfavour. The work was lacking in distinction, in
reserve, in the fine art of understatement. Instead of keeping my story
well in hand I had let it gallop away with me. Truly I was incorrigible.
“Anastasia,” I said one day, as I was about half through with my
revision, “you’re always asking if there’s no way you can help me. I
can suggest one.”
“Oh, good! What is it?”
“Well, I know where I can hire a typewriter for a month very cheaply.
You might try your hand at punching out this wonderful work of fiction
on it.”
“Oh, that please me very much.”
“All right. I’ll fetch the instrument of torture.”
It was a very old machine, of eccentric mechanism and uncouth
appearance. With fumbling hesitation she began. About a word a minute
was her average, and that word a mistake; but rapidly she progressed.
Sometimes I would hear a vigorous: “Nom d’un Chien!” and would find
that she had gone over the same line twice. Then again, she would get
her carbon paper wrong, and the duplicate would come out on the back of
the original. At other times it was only that she had run over the edge
of the paper.
The typewriter, too, was somewhat lethargic in action. It seemed to
say: “I’m so old in service, and my joints are so stiff--surely I
might be allowed to take my own time. If you try to hurry me I’ll get
my fingers tangled, or I’ll jam my riband, or I’ll make all kinds of
mistakes. Really, it’s time I was superannuated.” No beginner, even
in a Business School, ever tackled a more decrepit and cantankerous
machine, and it said much for her patience that she turned out such
good copy.
So passed August and most of September--day after day of grinding
work in sweltering heat; I, pruning, piecing, chopping, changing; she
pounding patiently at that malcontent machine. Then at last, after a
long, hard day it was done. The sunshine was mellow on the roofs as I
watched her write the closing words. She handed the page to me, and,
regarding the sunlight almost sorrowfully, she folded her tired hands.
Two tears stole down her pale cheeks.
All at once I saw how worn and weary she was. Thin, gentle, sad--more
than ever like a child she looked, with her exquisite profile, and the
heaped-up masses of her dark hair; more than ever like a child with
her shrinking figure and her delicate pallor: yet she would soon be
nineteen. The idea came to me that in my passion of creative egotism I
had given little thought to her.
“Why, what’s the matter, Little Thing? Are you sick?”
She looked at me piteously.
“Have you not see? Have you not guess?”
“No, what?” I demanded in a tone of alarm.
“Pretty soon you are going to be a fazzer.”
“My God!”
I could only gasp and stare at her.
“Well, are you not going to kees me, and say you are not sorry?”
“Yes, yes. There, Little Thing ... I--I’m glad.”
But there was no conviction in my tone, and I sat gazing into vacancy.
In my intense preoccupation never had such a thing occurred to me.
It came as a shock, as something improper, as one of those brutal
realities that break in so wofully on the serenities of life. There was
a ridiculous side to it, too. I saw myself sheepishly wheeling a baby
carriage, and I muttered with set teeth: “Never!”
“Confound it all! It’s so embarrassing,” I thought distressfully.
“It upsets my whole programme. It makes life more complex, and I am
trying to make it more simple. It gives me new responsibilities, and
my every effort is to avoid them. Worst of all, it seems to sound the
death-knell of my youth. To feel like a boy has always been my ideal of
well-being, and how can one feel like a boy with a rising son to remind
one of maturity?”
Perhaps, however, it would be a daughter. Somehow that didn’t seem so
bad. So to change the subject I suggested that we take a walk along
the river. As we went through the Tuileries all of the western city
seemed to wallow in flame. The sky rolled up in tawny orange, and the
twin towers of the Trocadero were like arms raised in distress amid a
conflagration. The river was a welter of lilac fire, while above the
portal of the Grand Palace the chariot driver held his rearing horses
in a blaze of glory. To the east all was light and enchantment, as a
thousand windows burned like imperial gems, and tower and spire and
dome shimmered in a delicate dust of gold.
“What a city, this Paris!” I murmured. “Add but three letters to it and
you have Paradise.”
“Where you are, darleen, to me it is always Paradise,” said Anastasia.
In the tranquil moods of matrimony, how is it that one shrinks so from
sentiment? On the Barbary Coasts of Love we excel in it. In books, on
the stage, we revel in it; but when it comes to the hallowed humdrum
of the home it suits us better to be curtly commonplace. This is so
hard for the Latin races to understand. They are so emotional, so
unconscious in their affection. Doubtless Anastasia put down my reserve
to coldness, but I could not help it.
“Look here, Little Thing,” I said, as we walked home, “you mustn’t
work any more. Let’s go to the country for a week or two. Let’s go to
Fontainebleau.”
“How we get money?”
“We’ll use that extra hundred francs.”
“Yes, but when that is spend?”
“Oh, don’t worry. Something will turn up. Let’s go.”
“If you like it. I shall love it, the rest, the good air. Just one
week.”
“And let’s take the Môme with us. Frosine will let her go. It will be
such a treat for her. Perhaps, too, Helstern will spare a few days and
join us.”
“Ah, it will all be so nice.”
So next day I bundled up _Tom, Dick and Harry_, and under the name of
Silenus Starset, I sent it off to the publishers of my other novels.
“I’ve been thinking, Little Thing,” I said, “that when we come back
we’d better give up the apartment and take a room. We can save over
twenty francs a month like that. It won’t be for long. When the novel’s
accepted, there will be an end of our troubles.”
“Just as you like it. I’ve been very happy.”
Helstern promised to meet us in the forest, so that afternoon with the
Môme and a hundred francs we took the train to Barbizon. If we had
not both been avid for it, that holiday would have been worth while
only to see the rapture of the Môme. It was her first sight of the
real country, and she was delirious with delight. Anastasia had a busy
time answering her questions, trying to check her excitement, gently
restraining her jerking arms and legs. Her eyes shone, her tongue
rattled, her head pivoted eagerly, and many on the train watched her
with amusement.
As we rolled through the country of Millet, the westering sun
slanted across the level fields, catching the edges of the furrows,
and launching long shadows across the orchards. We took rooms in a
cottage in Barbizon. From the sun-baked street a step, and we were in
the thick of the forest, drowned in leafy twilight and pine-scented
solitude. And with every turn, under that canopy of laughing leaves,
the way grew wilder and more luring. The molten sunshine dripped
through branches, flooding with gold the ferny hollows, dappling with
amber the russet pathway. Down, through the cool green aisles it led
in twilights of translucent green, mid pillering oak and yielding
carpets of fine-powdered cones. And ever the rocks grew more grotesque,
taking the shapes of griffins and primordial beasts, all mottled
with that splendid moss of crimson, green, and gold. Then it grew on
one that wood nymphs were about, that fawns were peeping from the
lightning-splintered oaks, and that the spell of the forest was folding
one around.
On the second day Helstern joined us. He was gloomily enthusiastic,
pointing out to me beauties of form and colour I would have idly
passed. He made me really feel ashamed of my crassness. What a gifted,
acute chap! But, oh, how atrabilious!
“For Heaven’s sake, old man,” I said one day, “don’t be so pessimistic.”
“How can a man be other than pessimistic,” he answered, “with a foot
like mine. Just think what it means. Look here.”
Rolling up his sleeve he showed me an arm a sculptor might have raved
over.
“If I’d been all right, what an athlete I’d have made. Look at my
torso, my other leg. And my whole heart is for action, for energy, for
deeds. Just think how much that makes life worth while is barred to me.
And I shrink from society, especially where there are women. I’m always
thinking they pity me. Oh, that’s gall and wormwood--to be pitied! I
should have a wife, children, a home, yet here I am a lonely, brooding
misanthrope; and I’m only forty-six.”
Yet he cheered up when the Môme was near. The two were the greatest of
friends now, and it was a notable sight to see the big man with his
Forbes Robertson type of face and his iron-grey mane, leading by the
hand the little girl of five with the slender limbs, the pansy-blue
eyes, and the honey-yellow hair.
And what exciting tales the Môme would have to tell on her return: how
they had surprised a deer nibbling at the short grass; how a wild boar
with tushes gleaming had glared at them out of the brake; how an eagle
had arisen from a lonely gorge! Then there were lizards crawling on the
silver-grey rocks, and the ceaseless calling of cuckoos, and scolding
squirrels, and drumming woodpeckers. Oh, that was the happy child! Yet
sometimes I wondered if the man was not as happy in his own way.
He was a queer chap, was Helstern. I remember one time we all sat
together on a fallen log, and the sky seen through the black bars of
the pines was like a fire of glowing coals. Long, serene and mellow the
evening lengthened to a close.
“You know,” said the sculptor, as he pulled steadily at the Turk’s
head pipe, and regarded the Môme thoughtfully, “I believe that all
children should be reared and educated by the State. Then there would
be no unfair handicapping of the poor: each child would find its proper
place in the world.”
“What would you do with the home?”
“I would surely destroy the millions of unworthy homes, stupid homes,
needy homes, bigoted homes, sordid homes. I would replace these with
a great glorious Home, run by a beneficent State, where from the
very cradle children would be developed and trained on scientific
principles, where they would be taught that the noblest effort of man
is the service of man; the most ignoble, the seeking of money. I would
teach them to live for the spiritual, not the sensual benefits of
life. Many private homes do not teach these things. Their influence is
pernicious. How many men can look back on such homes and not declare
them bungling makeshifts, either stupidly narrow, or actually unhappy?”
“You would destroy the love ties of parent and child?”
“Not at all. I would strengthen them. As it is, how many children
are educated away from their homes, in convents, boarding-schools,
_Lycees_? Do they love their parents any the less? No; the more, for
they do not see so much that is weak and contemptible in them. But
if mothers wish, let them enter the State nurseries and nurse their
own little ones--not according to our bungling, ignorant methods, but
according to the methods of science. Then the youngsters would not be
exposed to the anxieties that darken the average home; they would not
pick up and perpetuate the vulgarities of their parents. The child of
the pauper would be just as refined as the child of the peer. Think
what that would mean; a breaking down of all class distinction. The
word ‘gentleman’ would come into its true significance, and in a few
years we would have a new race, with new ideals, new ambitions, new
ways of thought.”
“You would educate them, too?”
“They would have all the education they wanted, but not in the present
way. They would be taught to examine, to reason: not to accept
blindly the beliefs of their fathers; to sift, to analyse: not to let
themselves be crammed with ready-made ideas. I would not try to turn
them all out in one mould, as the pedagogues do; I would try to develop
their originality. Question and challenge would be their attitude. I
would establish ‘Chairs of Inquiry.’ I would teach them that the circle
is not round, and that two and two do not make four. Up the great
stairway of Truth would I lead them, so that standing on its highest
point they might hew still higher steps in the rock of knowledge.”
“And how would you pay for this national nursery nonsense?”
“By making money uninheritable. I believe the hope of the future, the
triumph of democracy, the very salvation of the race lies in the State
education of the children. The greatest enemies of the young are the
old. Instead of the child honouring the parents, the parents should
honour the child; for if there’s any virtue in evolution the son ought
to be an improvement on the father.”
In the growing darkness I could see the bowl of his pipe glow and fade.
I was not paying much attention to what he was saying, but there in
that scented pine-gloom it was a pleasure to listen to that rich,
vibrating voice.
“I want to be fair, I want to be just, I want to see every man do his
share of the world’s work. Let him earn as much money as he likes, but
at his death let it revert to the State for the general education of
the race, not to pamper and spoil his own particular progeny. Let the
girls be taught the glory of motherhood, and the men military duty;
then, fully equipped for the struggle, let all go forth. How simple it
is! How sane! Yet we’re blind, so blind.”
“Solonge is sleeping in my arms,” said Anastasia. “I sink it is time we
must go home.”
CHAPTER X
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF DOROTHY MADDEN
The time was drawing near when I would become a father. Yet as the hour
of my trial approached I realised that I was glad, glad. I hoped it
would be a girl; nay, I was sure it would be a girl; a little, dark,
old-fashioned girl, whose hand I would hold on my rambles, and whose
innocent mind I would watch unfolding like a flower. And I would call
her ... yes, I would call her Dorothy.
Dorothy! How sweet the name sounded! But no sweeter than my little
daughter--of that I was sure. I could feel her hand, small as a rose
leaf, nestling in mine; see her innocent, tarn-brown eyes gazing upward
into my face. Then as she ran and eagerly plucked a vagrant blossom I
would weave about it some charming legend. I would people the glade
with fairies for her, and the rocks with gnomes. In her I would live
over again my own wonderful childhood. She, too, would be a dreamer,
sharing that wonderful kingdom of mine, understanding me as no other
had ever done.
Then when she grew up, what a wonderful woman she would be! How proud
she would be of me! How, in old age, when my hair grew white, and my
footsteps faltered, she would take my arm, and together we would walk
round the old garden in the hush of eventide.
“Wonderful destiny!” I cried, inspired by the sentimental pictures
unfolding themselves before me. “I can see myself older yet, an
octogenarian. My back is bent, my hair is snowy white, I have a
venerable beard, and kindly eyes that shine through gold-rimmed
spectacles. A tartan shawl is round my shoulders, and my hands, as they
rest on my silver-headed cane, are glazed and crinkly. But, crowning
glory! Greater than that array of children of my mind for which men
give me honour, are the children of my flesh who play around my knee,
my grandchildren. There will be such a merry swarm of them, and in
their joyous laughter I will grow young again. Oh, blessed destiny! To
be a father is much; but to be a grandfather so infinitely nobler--and
less trouble.”
The more I thought over it, the more I became impressed. My imminent
paternity became almost an obsession with me. My marriage had surprised
me. No time had I to embroider it with the flowers of fancy, but
this was different. So engrossed did I become with a sense of my own
importance that you would have thought no one had ever become a father
before. In my enthusiasm I told Lorrimer of my interesting condition,
but the faun-like young man rather damped my ardour.
“Marriage,” he observed, in his usual cynical manner, “is a lottery,
in which the prizes are white elephants. But Fatherhood, that’s the
sorriest of gambles. True, as you suggest, your daughter may marry the
President of the United States, but on the other hand she may turn out
to be another Brinvilliers. She may be a Madame de Staël and she may be
a Pompadour. Then again, you may have a family of a dozen.”
“But I won’t,” I protested indignantly.
“Well, just suppose. You may have a dozen ordinary respectable
tax-payers and one rotter. Don’t you think the black sheep will
discount all your successful efforts? Really, old man, you’re taking
an awful chance. Then after all it’s an ungrateful business. The girls
get married and enter the families of their husbands; the boys either
settle far away, or get wives you don’t approve of. Anyway, you lose
them. At the worst you beget a criminal, at the best an ingrate. It’s a
poor business. However, cheer up, old man: we’ll hope for the best.”
Helstern, on the other hand, took a different view of it. The sculptor
was sombrely enthusiastic.
“You must let me do a group of it, Madden. I’ll call it the First-born.
I’m sure I could take a gold medal with it.”
He led me to a café and in his tragic tones ordered beer in which we
drank to the health of the First-born.
“Just think of it,” he rolled magnificently, his visionary instincts
aroused; “just think of that little human soul waiting to be born, and
it’s you that give it the chance to enter this world. Oh, happy man!
Just think of all the others, the countless hosts of the unborn waiting
their turn. Why, it’s an inspiring sight, these wistful legions,
countless as the sands of the sea. And it’s for us to welcome them, to
be the means of opening the door to as many as possible, to give them
beautiful bodies to enter into, and to make the world more pleasant
for them to dwell in. Now, there’s a glorious ambition for us all. Let
parenthood be the crowning honour of life. Let it be the duty of the
race to so improve conditions that there will be the right kind of
welcome waiting for them--that they will be fit and worthy in body and
soul to live the life that is awaiting them.”
He drank deeply from his big stein, and wiped some foam from his lips.
“Why, it’s more than an ambition: it’s a religion. The Japanese
worship the Dead; let us worship the Unborn, the great races who are
to come, the people we are going to help to make great. For on us it
all depends, on us to-day. Every action of ours is like a pebble thrown
in a still sea, the waves of which go rippling down eternity. Yes,
let us realise our responsibility to the Unborn, and govern our lives
accordingly in grace and goodliness. There! that goes to the very heart
of all morality--to live our best, not because we are expecting to be
rewarded, but because we are making for generations to come better
bodies, better homes, better lives. And they in their turn will realise
their duty to the others that are crowding on, and make the world still
worthier for their occupation.”
He filled his Turk’s head pipe thoughtfully.
“I want to go further,” he went on, “but the rest is more fanciful. I
believe that the armies of the Unborn know that it all depends on us
here to-day what kind of deal they are going to get, and in their vast,
blind way they are trying to influence us. I like to think that that
is the great impulse towards good we all feel, the power that in spite
of selfishness, is gradually lifting us onward and upward. It is the
multitude to come, trying in their blind, pitiful way to influence us,
to make us better. There they wait, the soldiers of the future, ready
to take up the great fight, to carry the banner of freedom, happiness,
and mutual love to the golden goal of universal brotherhood. Truly I
worship the Unborn.”
He lit his pipe solemnly.
“Then, let me congratulate you, Madden. You are a very lucky man.”
Much cheered I thanked him and, absorbed in my dreams of paternity,
continued to tramp the streets. All the time I was seeing that slim
little girl of mine, with her long dark hair, her hazel eyes, her
quaint, old-fashioned ways. And as the day drew near she grew more and
more real to me. I could feel her caressing arms around my neck, and
her rosebud mouth pressed to mine. Truly she was the most adorable
child that ever lived.
One piece of luck we had at this period: The fairy stories were
accepted by the _Piccadilly Magazine_ and we got ten pounds for them,
thus saving the situation once again.
When the time came that we should obtain a new lodging I had taken a
room in the rue D’Assas, but I was immediately sorry, for I discovered
that it overlooked the Maternity Hospital Tarnier. The very first
morning I saw a young woman coming out with a new baby. She was a mere
girl, hatless and all alone, and she cried very bitterly.
Then that night, as I was preparing to ascend the stairs, I heard
terrible shrieks coming from the great, gloomy building as if some
woman within were being painfully murdered. For a moment I paused,
stricken with horror. There was a cab drawn up close by, and the
_cocher_ was pacing beside it. He was the typical Parisian cab-driver,
corpulent and rubicund, the product of open air, no brain worry, and
generous living. He indicated the direction of the appalling cries:
“The world’s not coming to an end just yet,” he observed with a great
rosy grin.
Nor was the view from our window conducive of more cheerful thoughts.
I could look right down into one of the wards, a great, barn-like
place, mathematically monotonous, painfully clean. There were the white
enamelled beds, each with its face of pain on the pillow, its tumbled
bedding, agony-twisted or still in apathy. Then in the night I suddenly
started, for once again I heard those awful sounds. They began as long,
half-stifled moans ... then screams, each piercing, sharp-edged with
agony, holding a strange note of terror ... then shriek upon shriek
till the ultimate expression of human agony seemed to be reached ...
then sudden silence.
At least twice during the night this would happen, and often in the
morning there would be a dismal little funeral cortége standing outside
the gates: a man dabbing red eyes with a handkerchief would herd some
blubbering children into a carriage, and drive after a hearse in which
lay a coffin. It was all very melancholy, and preyed on my spirits.
I wondered how people could live here always; but no doubt they got
hardened. No doubt this was why we got our room so cheaply.
Then at last the day came when Little Thing held me very tightly, gave
me a long, hard kiss and left me, to pass through that portal of pain.
Back I went to the room again. How empty it seemed now! I was miserable
beyond all words. I had dinner at the Lilas, and for two hours sat
moodily brooding over my coffee. What amazed me was that other men
could go through this trial time after time and take it with such
calmness. The long-haired poets, the _garçons_ with their tight, white
aprons--were they fathers too? A girl came and sat by me, a girl with
high cheek-bones, snake-like eyes, and a mouth like a red scar. I rose
with dignity, sought my room and my bed.
There I fell into a troubled doze in which I dreamed of Dorothy.
She had grown up and had made her _début_ as an operatic star with
overwhelming success. How proud I was of her! Then suddenly as I gazed,
she changed to the young woman of the café, who had looked at me so
meaningly. I awoke with a crushing sense of distress.
Hark! Was that a scream? It seemed to cleave my very heart. But then
it might be some one else. There was no distinguishing quality in
these screams. Trull or princess they were all alike, just plain
mothers crying in their agony. No, I could not tell ... but it was too
terrible. I dressed hurriedly and went out into the streets.
At three in the morning Paris is a city of weird fascination. It turns
to us a new side, sinister, dark, mysterious. Even as the rats gather
in its gutters, so do the human rats take possession of its pavements.
Every one you meet seems on evil bent, and in the dim half-light you
speculate on their pursuits. Here come two sauntering demireps with
complexions of vivid certainty; there a rake-hell reels homeward
from the night dens of Montmartre; now it is a wretched gatherer of
cigarette stubs, peering hawk-eyed as he shambles along; then two dark,
sallow youths, with narrow faces, glinting eyes, and unlit cigarettes
in their cynical mouths--the sinister Apache.
Coming up the Boul’ Mich’ were a stream of tumbrels from the Halles,
and following their trail I came on a scene bewildering in its movement
and clamour. The carts that had been arriving since the previous
night had gorged the ten pavilions that form the great Paris Market
till they overflowed far into the outlying streets. The pavements were
blocked with heaps of cabbages and cauliflowers, carrots and turnips,
celery and asparagus, while a dozen different kinds of salad gleamed
under the arc-lights with a strange unnatural viridity. In other parts
of the market crates of chickens and rabbits were being dumped on the
pavements; fresh fish from the coast were being unloaded in dripping,
salty boxes; and a regiment of butchers in white smocks were staggering
under enough sides of beef to feed an army.
What an orgy of colour it was! You might pass from the corals and
ivorys of the vegetable market to the fierce crimsons of the meat
pavilion; from the silver greys of the section devoted to fish, to the
golden yellows of the hall dedicated to butter, and cheese. There were
a dozen shades of green alone--from the light, glossy green of the
lettuce to the dull green of the cress; a dozen shades of red--from the
pale pink of the radish to the dark crimson of the beet.
Through this tumult of confusion I pushed my way. Hurrying porters in
red night-caps, with great racks of osier strapped on their backs,
rushed to and fro, panting, and dripping with sweat. Strapping
red-faced women with the manner of men ordered them about. A
self-reliant race, these women of the Halles, accustomed to hold their
own in the fierce struggle of competition, to eat and drink enormously,
to be exposed to the weather in all seasons. Their voices are raucous,
their eyes sharp, their substantial frames swathed in many layers of
clothes. Their world is the market; they were born in its atmosphere,
they will die with its clamour in their ears.
And from the surrounding slums what a sea of misery seemed to wash up!
At this time you may see human flotsam that is elsewhen invisible. In
the bustling confusion of the dawn the human rats slink out of their
holes to gain a few sous; not much--just four sous for soup and bread,
four sous for a corner in the dosshouse, and a few sous for cognac.
Here flourish all the _métiers_ of misery. I saw five old women whose
combined ages must have made up four hundred years, huddled together
for warmth, and all sunk in twitching, shuddering sleep. I saw outcast
men with livid faces and rat-chewed beards, whose clothes rotted on
their rickety frames. I saw others dazed from a debauch, goggle-eyed,
blue-lipped pictures of wretchedness. And the drinking dens in the
narrow streets vomited forth more wanton women, and malevolent men,
till it seemed to me that never does misery seem so pitiable, never
vice so repulsive, as when it swirls round those teeming pavilions at
four o’clock of a raw, rainy morning.
Suddenly I stopped to look at a female of unusual height and robust
rotundity. A woman merchant of the markets, seemingly of substance no
less than of flesh. Her voice was deep and hoarse, her eyes hard and
grim, and the firmness of her mouth was accentuated by a deliberate
moustache. A masculine woman. A truculent, overbearing woman. A very
virago of a woman. Her complexion was of such a hard redness, her Roman
nose so belligerent. On her bosom, which outstood like the seat of a
fauteuil, reposed a heavy gold chain and locket. On her great, red
wrists were bracelets of gold; and on her hands, which looked as if
they could deliver a sledge-hammer blow, sparkled many rings. Beside
this magnificent termagant her perspiring porters looked pusillanimous.
“Here,” thought I, “is the very Queen of the Halles.”
She was enthroned amid a pile of wicker crates containing large grey
shells. As I looked closer I saw that the grey shells contained grey
snails, and that those on the top of the heap were peering forth and
shooting out tentative grey horns. Some of them were even crawling up
the basket work. Then as I watched them curiously a label on the crate
caught my eye and I read:
MADAME SÉRAPHINE GUINOVAL
Marchande d’Escargots
Les Halles, Paris.
“Guinoval,” I thought: “that’s odd. Surely I’ve heard that name before.
Why, it’s the maiden name of Anastasia. The name of this enormous
woman, then, is Guinoval. Sudden idea! Might it not be that there is
some relationship between them?” But the contrast between my slight,
shrinking Anastasia with her child-like face and this dragoon of a
woman was so great that I dismissed the idea as absurd.
I was very tired when I reached home. I had been afoot four hours, and
dropping on my bed I fell asleep. About eleven o’clock I awoke with a
vague sense of fear. Something had happened, I felt. Hurrying down, I
entered the hospital.
“Yes,” they told me; “my wife had been confined during the night. She
was very weak, but doing well.”
“And the child,” I asked, trying to conceal my eagerness. “Was it a boy
or a girl?”
“The child, Monsieur, was a girl” (how my heart leapt); “but
unfortunately it--had not lived.”
“Dead!” I stammered; then after a stunned moment:
“Can I see her? Can I see my child?”
So they took me to something that lay swathed in linen. I started with
a curious emotion of pain. That! so grotesque, so pitiful,--that, the
gracious girl who was going to be so much to me, the sweet companion
who was going to understand me as no one else could, the precious
comfort of my declining years! Oh, the bitter mockery of it!
And so next day, alone in a single cab I took to the cemetery all that
was mortal of Dorothy Madden.
END OF BOOK II
BOOK III--THE AWAKENING
CHAPTER I
THE STRESS OF THE STRUGGLE
“Look here, Madden, you really ought to try and shake off your
melancholy,” said Helstern, as we sat in front of the Café Soufflet.
“To hear you call me melancholy,” I retorted, “is like hearing the pot
call the kettle black. And anyway you’ve never lost an only child.”
“I believe you’re a little mad,” said the sculptor, observing me
closely.
“Are we not all of us just a little mad? Would you have us entirely
sane? What a humdrum world that would be! I hate people who are so
egregiously sane.”
“But you’re letting this idea of yours altogether obsess you. You’ve
created an imaginary child, just as you might have created one in
fiction, only ten times more vividly. Then when the earthly frame into
which it was to pass proves too frail to hold it you refuse to let it
die. You keep on thinking: ‘My daughter! my daughter!’ And spiritually
you reach out to a being that only exists in your imagination.”
“She doesn’t, Helstern; that’s where you’re wrong. I thought so at
first, but now I know. She really exists, exists in that wonderful
world we can only dimly conjecture. She sought for admission to this
our world and it was denied her; but she lives in the spirit. She will
grow up in the spirit; and, even as if she were a child of the flesh, I
who loved her so well have her always.”
“Rubbish! Look here, I see what’s the matter with you. You’ve got the
fictionists’ imagination. This is only a creature of your brain. Kill
it, as Dickens killed little Dombey, as the female novelists kill their
little Willies and little Evas. Kill it.”
“Man, would you make a parricide of me? Murder is not done with hands
alone. I loved this child as never in my life have I loved any one.
It’s strange--I don’t believe I ever did really love any one before.
I’ve had an immense affection for people; but for Dorothy I would have
died.”
“You make me tired, man. She’s not real.”
“She is--to me; and supposing for a moment that she isn’t, is it not
the case that we can never care for real persons with their faults and
follies as we can for our idealised abstractions? We never really love
any one till we’ve lost them. But, as you say, I must rouse myself.”
“Why, of course. Granted that she really exists in the spirit, let
her presence be a sweetness and an inspiration to you, not a gnawing
sorrow. Buck up!”
“You’re right. I must get to my writing at once. After all I have my
wife to think of. She loves me.”
“She surely does, devotedly. You have a treasure in her, and you don’t
realise it.”
“I suppose not. My work takes so much of the power of feeling out of
me. My emotional life is sacrificed to it. The world I create is more
real to me than the world about me. I don’t think the creative artist
should marry. He only makes an apology for a husband.”
“Well, I think a man with the artistic temperament ought to marry a
woman who can look after him from the material side. She should be
a buffer between him and the world, always willing to keep in the
background and never be a constraint on him. A real genius, on the
other hand, ought never to marry. He’s altogether too impossible a
person. But then, Madden, you know you’re not a genius.”
He said this so oddly that I burst out laughing, and with that I felt
my grey mood lifting.
“By the way,” said Helstern, just as we were parting, “I don’t like
to mention it, but what with hospital expenses and so on you’ve been
having a pretty hard time of it lately. I’ve just had my quarterly
allowance--more money than I know what to do with. If a hundred francs
would be of any use to you I’ll never miss it.”
I was going to refuse; but the thought that the offer was made in such
a generous spirit made me hesitate; and the further thought that at the
moment all the money I had was ten francs, made me accept. So Helstern
handed me a pinkish bank note.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said. “But don’t be afraid, I’ll
pay you back one of these days. You know I’ve got a novel knocking
around the publishers. When it gets accepted I’ll be on velvet. In the
meantime this will help to keep the pot a-boiling. That reminds me I
must find a new place to hole up in. Do you know of any vacant rooms in
your quarter?”
“In the famous Quartier Mouffetard? Come with me and we’ll have a
look.”
The result was that for a rent of twenty francs a month I found myself
the tenant of a spacious garret in the rue Gracieuse. So, feeling well
pleased, I returned to the room in the rue D’Assas to gather together
our few effects. I was so engaged when a knock came to the door and the
little Breton _bonne_ appeared.
“A lady to see Monsieur.”
I rose from the heap of soiled linen I was trying to compress into as
small bulk as possible.
“Show her in,” I said with some surprise.
Then there entered one whom I had almost forgotten--Lucretia.
My first thought was: “Thank God! my wife isn’t here!” My second: “How
can I get rid of her?” It is true I have always tried to make life more
like fiction, to drench it with romance, to cultivate it in purple
patches. Here, then, was a dramatic situation I might have used in
one of my novels; here was a sentimental scene I might develop most
artistically; and now my whole panting, perspiring anxiety was not to
develop it. “Confound it!” I thought, “this should never have happened.
Why can’t fiction stay where it belongs?”
Lucretia was dressed with some exaggeration. Her split skirt showed a
wedge of purple stocking almost to the knee. Her blouse, too, was of
purple, a colour that sets my teeth on edge. She wore a mantle of prune
colour, and a toque of crushed strawberry velvet with an imitation
aigrette. The gilt heels of her shoes were so high that she was obliged
to walk in the mincing manner of the mannequin.
She offered me a languid hand and subsided unasked on the sofa. Her
lips were Cupid’s bows of vermilion, and her complexion was a work of
art. She regarded me with some defiance; then she spoke in excellent
French.
“Well, _mon ami_, I have come. You thought to leave me there in Napoli,
but I have followed you. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
“Do!” I said, astounded. “Why, you have no claim on me!”
“I have no claim on you. _You_ say that--you who have stolen my heart,
you who have made me suffer. You cannot deny that you have run away
from me.”
“I don’t deny it. I did run away from you; but it was to save you, to
save us both. I have done you no wrong.”
“Ah! you thought so. To leave one who loved you in that way. That is
like the Englishman.”
“But good heavens!” I cried, half distracted, “I thought I acted for
the best.”
“I love you still,” she went on; “I have traced you here; I am
friendless, alone, in this great and cruel city. What must I do?”
As she said these words, Lucretia, after seeing that she possessed
a handkerchief, applied it to her eyes so as not to disturb their
cosmetic environment, and wept carefully. There was no doubting the
genuineness of her grief. I was touched. After all had I not roused a
romantic passion in this poor girl’s heart? Was she not the victim of
my fatal charms? My heart ached for her. I would have sat down on the
sofa by her side and tried to comfort her, but prudence forbade.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but how can I help you? I have no money, and my
wife is in the hospital.”
“Your wife!”
“Yes; I’m married.”
“Not one of those girls I saw you with in the café that night?”
“Yes; the small one.”
“A--h.” She prolonged the exclamation. Then she delicately dried her
eyes. “That is different. What if I tell your wife how you treated me?”
“But I’ve done you no harm.”
“Would she believe that, do you think?”
“Hum! no! I don’t think she would. But what good would it do? You would
only cause suffering and estrangement, and you would gain nothing. I
told you I had no money to give you.”
Looking around the shabby room she saw the soiled linen I was trying to
do into a newspaper parcel. This evidently convinced her I was speaking
the truth.
“Bah!” she said, “why do you insult me with offers of money? If you
offered me ten thousand francs at this moment I would refuse them. What
I want is help, sympathy.”
“Oh! If it’s sympathy you want,” I said eagerly, “I’m there. I’ve
gallons of it on tap. But help--what can I do?”
“You have friends you can introduce me to. Can you not find me work
of some kind? Anything at all that will bring me an honest living.
Remember I am only a poor, weak woman, and I love you.”
Here she showed signs of weeping again.
“Well,” I said, touched once more, “I don’t know. The men I know are
all artists.” Then an idea shot through me like a bullet. To cure a
woman who is infatuated with you, introduce her to some man who is
more fascinating than yourself. But to whom could I transfer this
embarrassing affection? Helstern? He was out of the question. Lorrimer?
Ah, there was the man. Handsome, debonnaire Lorrimer; Lorrimer who
prided himself on being such a Lothario; whom I had heard say: “Why
should I wrong the sex whose privilege it is to love me by permitting
any one member to monopolise me?” Yes, Lorrimer should be the lucky
one. So I said:
“Let me see: you would not care to pose for the artists, would you?”
“Ah, yes, I think that would suit me very well indeed.”
“Well, then, I’ll give you the address of an artist friend. He’s poor,
but he knows every one. Perhaps he can help you. At least there will be
no harm in trying.”
So I gave her Lorrimer’s address, and she seemed more than grateful.
“Thank you very much. Shall I see you again soon?”
“Perhaps; but remember, not a word of Napoli.”
“No; trust me. I am very discreet. Well, _au revoir_.”
With that she took her departure, and once more I felt that I had
emerged successfully from a dangerous situation.
On the following day I hired a _voiture à bras_, and loading on it
my few poor sticks of furniture I easily pulled the load to my new
residence. Once there, it was surprising how soon I made the place
homelike. Anastasia was coming out of the hospital the following
day, and I was intensely eager that everything should be cheerful.
Fortunately, the window admitted much sunlight, and the slope of the
roof lent itself to quaint and snug effects of decoration. I really did
wonders with drapings of cheap cotton, made a lounge and a cosy corner
out of cushions, contrived a wardrobe (in view of an increase in our
prosperity), and constructed two cunning cupboards within which all
articles of mere utility were hid from sight.
Lorrimer dropped in and gave me a hand with the finishing touches.
He also loaned me three lifesize paintings in oil to adorn my walls.
They were studies for the forthcoming Salon picture that was to mark
a crisis in his career, and showed Rougette in different poses of the
nude. I did not think it worth while to say anything about Lucretia
just then.
Helstern, too, came to see how things were progressing and contributed
two clay figures, also of the nude; so that by the time everything was
finished my garret had become quite a startling repository of feminine
loveliness unadorned. The following morning I bought several bunches of
flowers from a barrow, at two sous a bunch, and arranged them about the
room. Then my two friends insisted on bringing up a supply of food and
preparing lunch.
So I went off to the hospital to fetch Anastasia. I felt as excited as
a child, and for the moment very happy. I had been to see her for a few
moments every day, when she would hold my hand and sometimes carry it
to her lips. She was of a deathly whiteness and more like a child than
ever. As she came out leaning on my arm I saw another of those sobbing
girls leaving the hospital with her baby.
“What an irony!” I said. “There’s a girl would give anything not to
have that infant. It’s a reproach and a disgrace to her. It will only
drag her down, prevent her making a living. It will be brought up in
misery. And we who wanted one so much, and would have made it so happy,
must go away empty-handed.”
“Yes,” she answered, with a sob in her throat; “the doctaire tell me
nevaire must I have anuzzer. He tell me it will keel me. And I want so
much--oh, I want leetle child!”
Hailing a cab, we were soon at our new home. She did not seem to take
much interest; yet, when she heard the sounds of welcome from within,
she brightened up. Then when the door was thrown open she gave a little
gasp of pleasure.
“Oh, I’m glad, I’m glad.”
For Lorrimer had painted a banner, _Welcome Home_, above the fireplace;
the sunshine flooded in; the flowers were everywhere, and a wondrous
lunch was spread on the table. Then suddenly the two artists, standing
on either side of the doorway, put mirlitons to their mouths and
burst into the Marseillaise. They wrung her hand, and even (with my
permission) saluted her on both cheeks; and she was so rarely glad to
see them that her eyes shone with tears. So after all her homecoming
was far from a sad one.
And after lunch and the good bottle of Pommard that Helstern had
provided we discussed plans and prospects with the hope and enthusiasm
of beginners; while she listened, but more housewife-like took stock of
her new home and its practical possibilities.
Next day I began work again. My idea was to completely ignore my own
ideals and turn out stuff according to magazine formula. I had made
an analysis of some thirty magazine stories; it only remained to
mix them according to recipe and serve hot. I continued to hire the
rheumatic typewriter, and composed straight on to the machine, so that
I accomplished at least one story a day.
Once more Anastasia took charge of the forwarding, but she seemed to
have less enthusiasm now. It was as if her severe illness had taken
something out of her. All the money I had been able to give her was
seventy francs, and this was not very heartening. She got out her
_métier_ again; but she would often pause in her work as if her back
pained her, and rub her eyes as if they too ached. Then with stubborn
patience she would resume her toil.
One morning the manuscript of _Tom, Dick and Harry_ was returned from
the publisher, with a note to say that “at that time when the taste of
the public was all for realistic fiction work of fancy stood little
chance of success without a well-known name on the cover. As the policy
of the firm was conservative they were obliged to return it.”
How I laughed over this letter. How bitterly, I thought, they would be
chagrined when they found out who the unknown Silenus Starset was. I
was even maliciously glad, and, chuckling, sent off the manuscript on
another voyage of adventure.
I fairly bombarded the magazines with short stories. There was not one
of any standing that was not holding a manuscript of mine. And such
manuscripts, some of them! I was amazed at my cheek in offering them. I
would select one of my twelve stock plots, alter the setting, give it a
dexterous twist or two, and shoot it off. My mark was a minimum of a
manuscript a day, and grimly I stuck to it.
For three weeks I kept pounding away on my clacking typewriter. It was
costing us a small income in stamps, and economy of the most rigid kind
had to be practised in other ways. We gave up eating ordinary meat and
took to patronising the _Boucherie Chevaline_. I came to appreciate
a choice mule steak, and considered an _entrecôte_ of ass a special
delicacy. We made salads of _poiret_, which is called the poor man’s
asparagus. We drank _vin ordinaire_ at eight _sous_ a litre and our
bread was of the coarsest. Down there in the rue Mouffetard it was no
trouble to purchase with economy, for everything was sold from that
standpoint.
I think the rue Mouffetard deserves a special page of description,
because it contains the elements of all Paris slumdom. From the steep
and ancient rue St. Geneviève de Montagne branches the dismal rue
Descartes. It runs between tall, dreary houses, growing gradually more
sordid; then suddenly, as if ashamed of itself, it changes its name to
the rue Mouffetard, and continues its infamous way.
The street narrows to the width of a lane and the houses that flank it
grow colder, blacker, more decrepit. The pavement on either side is a
mere riband, and the cobbled way is overrun with the ratlike humanity
spewed forth from the sinister houses. The sharp gables and raking
roofs, out of which windows like gaping sores make jagged openings,
notch themselves grotesquely against the sky. Their faces are gnawed by
the teeth of time and grimy with the dust of ages. Their windows are
like blind eyes, barred and repulsive. The doors that burrow into them
are nothing but black holes, so narrow that two people passing have to
turn sideways, so dark that it is like entering a charnel house.
Nearly every second shop is a _chope_, a _buvette_, a saloon. At one
point there are four clustered together. Some of these drinking dens
are so narrow they seem mere holes in the wall, scarcely any wider than
the width of their own door, and running back like dark cupboards. And
in them, with their heads together and their elbows on the tiny tables
you can see the ferret-faced Poilo, and Gigolette, his gosse, of the
greasy and elaborate coiffure. Hollow-cheeked, glittering of eye, light
as a cat, cunning, cynical, cruel, he smokes a cigarette; while she,
brazen, claw-fingered, rapacious, sips from his Pernod.
At the butchers’ only horse-meat is sold. A golden horse usually
surmounts the door, overlooking a sign--_Boucherie Chevaline_, or
sometimes _Boucherie Hyppagique_. The meat is very dark; the fat very
yellow; and there are festoons of red sausages, very red and glossy.
One shop bears the sign “House of Confidence.” There are other signs,
such as “Mule of premier quality,” “Ass of first choice.”
As you descend the street you get passing glimpses of inner courts of
hideous squalor, of side streets, narrow and resigned to misery. Daring
odours pollute the air and the way is now packed with wretchedness.
Grimy women, whose idea of a _coiffure_ is to get their matted hair
out of the way, trudge draggle-skirted by the side of husky-throated,
undersized men whose beards bristle brutishly. Bands of younger men
hang around the bars. They wear peaked caps and have woollen scarfs
around their throats. They look at the well-dressed passer-by with
furtive speculation. They live chiefly on the brazen girls who parade
up and down, with their hair coiled over their ears, clawed down in
front, sleek with brilliantine and studded with combs.
Then, as the narrow, tortuous street plunges down to the _carrefour_ of
the Gobelins it becomes violently commercial, a veritable market jammed
with barrows, studded with stalls, strident with street cries of all
kinds.
Here it is that Anastasia does her marketing. It is wonderful how much
she can bring home for a franc, sometimes enough to fill the net bag
she carries on her arm. She never wears a hat on these expeditions; it
is safer without one.
Three weeks gone; twenty stories written. I throw myself back in
weariness and despair. It is hard work doing three thousand words
a day, especially when one has to make a second copy for the clean
manuscript. I began at eight in the morning and worked till ten at
night. My face was thin, my checks pale, my eyes full of fag and
stress. How I despised the work I was doing! the shoddy, sentimental
piffle, the anæmic twaddle, the pandering to the vulgar taste for
stories of the upper circles. Ordinary folk not being sufficiently
interesting for a snobbish public my heroes were seldom less than
baronets. It got at last that every stroke of my typewriter jarred some
sensitive nerve of pain in me--“Typewriter nerves” they call it. Then
one night I gave up.
“I won’t do another of these wretched things,” I cried; “I’m worked
out. I feel as if my brain was mush, just so much sloppy stuff.”
“You must take rest, darleen. You work too hard.”
“Yes, rest in some far South Sea Island where I can forget that books
and typewriters exist. I’m heart-sick of the vampire trade. Well, I’ve
reached my limit. To-morrow I’m just going out to the Luxembourg to
loaf. Oh, that lovely word! I’m going to sit and watch the children
watching the Guignol, and laugh when they laugh. That’s all I’m equal
to--the Guignol.”
And I did. Full of sweet, tired melancholy I sat listlessly under the
trees, gazing at that patch of eager, intense, serious, uproarious,
utterly enchanted faces, planted in front of the immortal Punch and
Judy show. Oh, to have written that little drama! Everything else
could go. Oh, to play on the emotions like an instrument, as it played
on the emotions of these little ones! What an audience! How I envied
them their fresh keen joy of appreciation! I felt so jaded, so utterly
indifferent to all things. Yet I reflected to some extent their
enthusiasm. I gaped with them, I laughed with them, I applauded with
them.
Then with a suddenness that is overwhelming came the thought of my own
little dream-child, she who in years to come should have taken her
place in that hilarious band. After all, the November afternoon was
full of sadness. The withered leaves were underfoot, and the vague
despondency of the waning year hung heavily around me. Suddenly all joy
seemed to go clean out of life, and slowly I returned to the wretched
quarter in which I lived.
These were the sad days for us both, grey days of rain and boding.
Early and late she would work at her embroidery, yet often look at me
with a sigh. Then my manuscripts began to come back. Luckily, two were
accepted, one by a society weekly, the other by a woman’s journal.
The latter was to be paid for on publication; but I wrote pleading
necessity for the money and it was forthcoming. The two netted us three
pounds ten, enough to pay the rent and tide us over for another month.
Once more _Tom, Dick and Harry_ was returned, and once more gallantly
despatched. About this time I began to lose all confidence in myself.
On one occasion I said to her:
“See, Little Thing, what a poor husband you have. He can’t even support
you.”
“I have the best husband in the world. Courage, darleen. Everything
will come yet very right I know.”
“If only our child had lived,” I said moodily, gazing at the sodden,
sullen sky.
Sitting with her hands folded in her lap she did not answer. I saw that
she drew back from her beautiful embroidery so that a slow-falling tear
would not stain it.
“You know,” I went on, “I can’t believe we’ve lost her. Seems to me
she’s with us. I let myself think of her too much. I can’t help it. I
loved her. God, how I loved her! I never loved any one else like that.”
She looked at me piteously, but I did not see.
And next day, in a pouring rain, I walked to the cemetery and stood for
an hour by an almost indistinguishable little grave. I got back, as
they say, “wet as the soup,” and contracted a severe chill. Anastasia
made me stay in bed, and looked after me like a mother.
Yes, these were sad days; and there were times when I felt moved
to own defeat, to acknowledge success, to accept, the fortune I had
gained. Then I ground my teeth.
“No, I won’t. I’m hanged if I do. I’ll play the game, and in spite of
it all I’ll win.”