Before Pitou, the composer, left for the Hague, he called on Théophile
de Fronsac, the poet. _La Voix Parisienne_ had lately appointed de
Fronsac to its staff, on condition that he contributed no poetry.
"Good-evening," said de Fronsac. "Mon Dieu! what shall I write about?"
"Write about my music," said Pitou, whose compositions had been
rejected in every arrondissement of Paris.
"Let us talk sanely," demurred de Fronsac. "My causerie is half a
column short. Tell me something interesting."
"Woman!" replied Pitou.
De Fronsac flicked his cigarette ash. "You remind me," he said, "how
much I need a love affair; my sensibilities should be stimulated. To
continue to write with fervour I require to adore again."
"It is very easy to adore," observed Pitou.
"Not at forty," lamented the other; "especially to a man in Class A.
Don't forget, my young friend, that I have loved and been loved
persistently for twenty-three years. I cannot adore a repetition, and
it is impossible for me to discover a new type."
"All of which I understand," said Pitou, "excepting 'Class A.'"
"There are three kinds of men," explained the poet. "Class A are the
men to whom women inevitably surrender. Class B consists of those whom
they trust by instinct and confide in on the second day; these men
acquire an extensive knowledge of the sex--but they always fall short
of winning the women for themselves. Class C women think of merely as
'the others'--they do not count; eventually they marry, and try to
persuade their wives that they were devils of fellows when they were
young. However, such reflections will not assist me to finish my
causerie, for I wrote them all last week."
"Talking of women," remarked Pitou, "a little blonde has come to live
opposite our lodging. So far we have only bowed from our windows, but I
have christened her 'Lynette,' and Tricotrin has made a poem about her.
It is pathetic. The last verse--the others are not written yet--goes:
"'O window I watched in the days that are dead,
Are you watched by a lover to-day?
Are glimpses caught now of another blonde head
By a youth who lives over the way?
Does _she_ repeat words that Lynette's lips have said--
And does _he_ say what _I_ used to say?'"
"What is the answer?" asked de Fronsac. "Is it a conundrum? In any case
it is a poor substitute for a half a column of prose in _La Voix_.
How on earth am I to arrive at the bottom of the page? If I am short in
my copy, I shall be short in my rent; if I am short in my rent, I shall
be put out of doors; if I am put out of doors, I shall die of exposure.
And much good it will do me that they erect a statue to me in the next
generation! Upon my word, I would stand a dinner--at the two-franc
place where you may eat all you can hold--if you could give me a
subject."
"It happens," said Pitou, "that I can give you a very strange one. As I
am going to a foreign land, I have been to the country to bid farewell
to my parents; I came across an extraordinary girl."
"One who disliked presents?" inquired de Fronsac.
"I am not jesting. She is a dancer in a travelling circus. The flare
and the drum wooed me one night, and I went in. As a circus, well, you
may imagine--a tent in a fair. My fauteuil was a plank, and the
orchestra surpassed the worst tortures of the Inquisition. And then,
after the decrepit horses, and a mangy lion, a girl came into the ring,
with the most marvellous eyes I have ever seen in a human face. They
are green eyes, with golden lights in them."
"Really?" murmured the poet. "I have never been loved by a girl who had
green eyes with golden lights in them."
"I am glad you have never been loved by this one," returned the
composer gravely; "she has a curious history. All her lovers, without
exception, have committed suicide."
"What?" said de Fronsac, staring.
"It is very queer. One of them had just inherited a hundred thousand
francs--he hanged himself. Another, an author from Italy, took poison,
while all Rome was reading his novel. To be infatuated by her is
harmless enough, but to win her is invariably fatal within a few weeks.
Some time ago she attached herself to one of the troupe, and soon
afterwards he discovered she was deceiving him. He resolved to shoot
her. He pointed a pistol at her breast. She simply laughed--and
_looked at him_. He turned the pistol on himself, and blew his
brains out!"
De Fronsac had already written: "Here is the extraordinary history of a
girl whom I discovered in a fair." The next moment:
"But you repeat a rumour," he objected. "_La Voix Parisienne_ has
a reputation; odd as the fact may appear to you, people read it. If
this is published in _La Voix_ it will attract attention. Soon she
will be promoted from a tent in a fair to a stage in Paris. Well, what
happens? You tell me she is beautiful, so she will have hundreds of
admirers. Among the hundreds there will be one she favours. And then?
Unless he committed suicide in a few weeks, the paper would be proved a
liar. I should not be able to sleep of nights for fear he would not
kill himself."
"My dear," exclaimed Pitou with emotion, "would I add to your
anxieties? Rather than you should be disturbed by anybody's living, let
us dismiss the subject, and the dinner, and talk of my new Symphony. On
the other hand, I fail to see that the paper's reputation is your
affair--it is not your wife; and I am more than usually empty to-day."
"Your argument is sound," said de Fronsac. "Besides, the Editor refuses
my poetry." And he wrote without cessation for ten minutes.
The two-franc table-d'hôte excelled itself that evening, and Pitou did
ample justice to the menu.
Behold how capricious is the jade, Fame! The poet whose verses had left
him obscure, accomplished in ten minutes a paragraph that fascinated
all Paris. On the morrow people pointed it out to one another; the
morning after, other journals referred to it; in the afternoon the
Editor of _La Voix Parisienne_ was importuned with questions. No
one believed the story to be true, but not a soul could help wondering
if it might be so.
When a day or two had passed, Pitou received from de Fronsac a note
which ran:
"Send to me at once, I entreat thee, the name of that girl, and say
where she can be found. The managers of three variety theatres of the
first class have sought me out and are eager to engage her."
"Decidedly," said Pitou, "I have mistaken my vocation--I ought to have
been a novelist!" And he replied:
"The girl whose eyes suggested the story to me is called on the
programmes 'Florozonde.' For the rest, I know nothing, except that thou
didst offer a dinner and I was hungry."
However, when he had written this, he destroyed it.
"Though I am unappreciated myself, and shall probably conclude in the
Morgue," he mused, "that is no excuse for my withholding prosperity
from others. Doubtless the poor girl would rejoice to appear at three
variety theatres of the first class, or even at one of them." He
answered simply:
"Her name is 'Florozonde'; she will be found in a circus at Chartres"--
and nearly suffocated with laughter.
Then a little later the papers announced that Mlle. Florozonde--whose
love by a strange series of coincidences had always proved fatal--would
be seen at La Coupole. Posters bearing the name of "Florozonde"--yellow
on black--invaded the boulevards. Her portrait caused crowds to
assemble, and "That girl who, they say, deals death, that Florozonde!"
was to be heard as constantly as ragtime.
By now Pitou was at the Hague, his necessities having driven him into
the employment of a Parisian who had opened a shop there for the sale
of music and French pianos. When he read the Paris papers, Pitou
trembled so violently that the onlookers thought he must have ague.
Hilarity struggled with envy in his breast. "Ma foi!" he would say to
himself, "it seems that my destiny is to create successes for others.
Here am I, exiled, and condemned to play cadenzas all day in a piano
warehouse, while she whom I invented, dances jubilant in Paris. I do
not doubt that she breakfasts at Armenonville, and dines at
Paillard's."
And it was a fact that Florozonde was the fashion. As regards her eyes,
at any rate, the young man had not exaggerated more than was to be
forgiven in an artist; her eyes were superb, supernatural; and now that
the spangled finery of a fair was replaced by the most triumphant of
audacities--now that a circus band had been exchanged for the orchestra
of La Coupole--she danced as she had not danced before. You say that a
gorgeous costume cannot improve a woman's dancing? Let a woman realise
that you improve her appearance, and you improve everything that she
can do!
Nevertheless one does not pretend that it was owing to her talent, or
her costume, or the weird melody proposed by the chef d'orchestre, that
she became the rage. Not at all. That was due to her reputation.
Sceptics might smile and murmur the French for "Rats!" but, again,
nobody could say positively that the tragedies had not occurred. And
above all, there were the eyes--it was conceded that a woman with eyes
like that _ought_ to be abnormal. La Coupole was thronged every
night, and the stage doorkeeper grew rich, so numerous were the daring
spirits, coquetting with death, who tendered notes inviting the Fatal
One to supper.
Somehow the suppers were rather dreary. The cause may have been that
the guest was handicapped by circumstances--to be good company without
discarding the fatal air was extremely difficult; also the cause may
have been that the daring spirits felt their courage forsake them in a
tête-à-tête; but it is certain that once when Florozonde drove home in
the small hours to the tattered aunt who lived on her, she exclaimed
violently that, "All this silly fake was giving her the hump, and that
she wished she were 'on the road' again, with a jolly good fellow who
was not afraid of her!"
Then the tattered aunt cooed to her, reminding her that little
ducklings had run to her already roasted, and adding that she (the
tattered aunt) had never heard of equal luck in all the years she had
been in the show business.
"Ah, zut!" cried Florozonde. "It does not please me to be treated as if
I had scarlet fever. If I lean towards a man, he turns pale."
"Life is good," said her aunt philosophically, "and men have no wish to
die for the sake of an embrace--remember your reputation! II faut
souffrir pour être fatale. Look at your salary, sweetie--and you have
had nothing to do but hold your tongue! Ah, was anything ever heard
like it? A miracle of le bon Dieu!"
"It was monsieur de Fronsac, the journalist, who started it," said
Florozonde. "I supposed he had made it up, to give me a lift; but, ma
foi, I think _he_ half believes it, too! What can have put it in
his head? I have a mind to ask him the next time he comes behind."
"What a madness!" exclaimed the old woman; "you might queer your pitch!
Never, never perform a trick with a confederate when you can work
alone; that is one of the first rules of life. If he thinks it is true,
so much the better. Now get to bed, lovey, and think of pleasant
things--what did you have for supper?"
Florozonde was correct in her surmise--de Fronsac did half believe it,
and de Fronsac was accordingly much perturbed. Consider his dilemma!
The nature of his pursuits had demanded a love affair, and he had
endeavoured conscientiously to comply, for the man was nothing if not
an artist. But, as he had said to Pitou, he had loved so much, and so
many, that the thing was practically impossible for him, He was like
the pastrycook's boy who is habituated and bilious. Then suddenly a new
type, which he had despaired of finding, was displayed. His curiosity
awoke; and, fascinated in the first instance by her ghastly reputation,
he was fascinated gradually by her physical charms. Again he found
himself enslaved by a woman--and the woman, who owed her fame to his
services, was clearly appreciative. But he had a strong objection to
committing suicide.
His eagerness for her love was only equalled by his dread of what might
happen if she gave it to him. Alternately he yearned, and shuddered, On
Monday he cried, "Idiot, to be frightened by such blague!" and on
Tuesday he told himself, "All the same, there may be something in it!"
It was thus tortured that he paid his respects to Florozonde at the
theatre on the evening after she complained to her aunt. She was in her
dressing-room, making ready to go.
"You have danced divinely," he said to her. "There is no longer a
programme at La Coupole--there is only 'Florozonde.'"
She smiled the mysterious smile that she was cultivating. "What have
you been doing with yourself, monsieur? I have not seen you all the
week."
De Fronsac sighed expressively. "At my age one has the wisdom to avoid
temptation."
"May it not be rather unkind to temptation?" she suggested, raising her
marvellous eyes.
De Fronsac drew a step back. "Also I have had a great deal to do," he
added formally; "I am a busy man. For example, much as I should like to
converse with you now.--" But his resolution forsook him and he was
unable to say that he had looked in only for a minute.
"Much as you would like to converse with me--?" questioned Florozonde.
"I ought, by rights, to be seated at my desk," he concluded lamely.
"I am pleased that you are not seated at your desk," she said.
"Because?" murmured de Fronsac, with unspeakable emotions.
"Because I have never thanked you enough for your interest in me, and I
want to tell you that I remember." She gave him her hand. He held it,
battling with terror.
"Mademoiselle," he returned tremulously, "when I wrote the causerie you
refer to, my interest in you was purely the interest of a journalist,
so for that I do not deserve your thanks. But since I have had the
honour to meet you I have experienced an interest altogether different;
the interest of a man, of a--a--" Here his teeth chattered, and he
paused.
"Of a what?" she asked softly, with a dreamy air.
"Of a friend," he muttered. A gust of fear had made the "friend" an
iceberg. But her clasp tightened.
"I am glad," she said. "Ah, you have been good to me, monsieur! And if,
in spite of everything, I am sometimes sad, I am, at least, never
ungrateful."
"You are sad?" faltered the vacillating victim. "Why?"