Chapter 14
"'My little cabbage,' returned madame, 'we are so near to ruin as we are, that a step nearer is of small importance. If Little-Flower-of- the-Wood should come, it might be the turning-point in our fortunes-- people would hear of it, the Bon Vieux Temps might become renowned. Yes, we shall buy partridges, and peaches--and bonbons, and flowers also, and we shall hire a piano! And if our good angel should indeed send her to us, I swear she shall pass as pleasant an evening as if she had gone to Maxim's or the Abbaye!
"Bien! She convinced him. For the rest of the day the place was in a state of frenzy. Never before had such a repast been seen in its kitchen, never before had he cooked with such loving care, even when he had been preparing a dinner of ceremony on the boulevard Haussmann. Madame herself ran out to arrange for the piano. The floor was swept. The waiter was put into a clean shirt. Dupont shed tears of excitement in his saucepans.
"He served the two-franc dinner that evening with eyes that watched nothing but the clock. All his consciousness now was absorbed by the question whether the dancer would come or not. The dinner passed somehow--it is to be assumed that the customers grumbled, but in his suspense Dupont regarded them with indifference. The hours crept by. It was a quarter to twelve--twelve o'clock. He trembled behind the counter as if with ague. Now it was time that she was here! His face was blanched, his teeth chattered in his head. What if he had been hoaxed after all? Half-past twelve! The sweat ran down him. Terror gripped his heart. A vision of all the partridges wasted convulsed his soul. Hark! a carriage stopped. He tottered forward. The door opened-- she had come!
"Women are strange. Little-Flower-of-the-Wood, who yawned her pretty head off at Armenonville, was enraptured with the Bon Vieux Temps. The rest of the party took their tone from her, and everything was pronounced 'fun,' the coarse linen, the dirty ceiling, the admiring stares of the bock-drinkers. The lady herself declared that she had 'never enjoyed a supper so much in her life,' and the waiter--it was not Adolphe then--was dumfounded by a louis tip.
"Figure yourself the exultation of madame! 'Ah,' she chuckled, when they shut up shop at sunrise, 'what did I tell you, my little cabbage?' Monsieur, as an editor, will have observed that a woman who reveals astounding force in an emergency may triumph pettily when the emergency is over?
"'It remains to be seen whether they will come any more, however,' said Dupont. 'Let us go to bed. Mon Dieu, how sleepy I am!' It was the first occasion that the Bon Vieux Temps had been open after two o'clock in the morning.
"It was the first occasion, and for some days they feared it might be the last. But no, the dancer came again! A few eccentrics who came with her flattered themselves on having made a 'discovery.' They boasted of it. Gradually the name of the Bon Vieux Temps became known. By the time that Little-Flower-of-the-Wood had had enough, there was a supper clientele without her. Folly is infectious, and in Paris there are always people catching a fresh craze. Dupont began to put up his prices, and levied a charge on the waiter for the privilege of waiting at supper. The rest of the history is more grave ... _Comment_, monsieur? Since you insist--again an absinthe!"
Janiaud paused, and ran his dirty fingers through his hair.
"This man can talk!" said the Editor, in an undertone.
"Gentlemen," resumed the poet, "two years passed. Little-Flower-of-the- Wood was on the Italian Riviera. The Italian Riviera was awake again after the heat of the summer--the little town that had dozed for many months began to stir. Almost every day now she saw new faces on the promenade; the sky was gentler, the sea was fairer. And she sat loathing it all, craving to escape from it to the bleak streets of Paris.
"Two winters before, she had been told, 'Your lungs will stand no more of the pranks you have been playing. You must go South, and keep early hours, or--' The shrug said the rest. And she had sold some of her diamonds and obeyed. Of course, it was an awful nuisance, but she must put up with it for a winter in order to get well. As soon as she was well, she would go back, and take another engagement. She had promised herself to be dancing again by May.
"But when May had come, she was no better. And travelling was expensive, and all places were alike to her since she was forbidden to return to Paris. She, had disposed of more jewellery, and looked forward to the autumn. And in the autumn she had looked forward to the spring. So it had gone on.
"At first, while letters came to her sometimes, telling her how she was missed, the banishment had been alleviated; later, in her loneliness, it had grown frightful. Monsieur, her soul--that little soul that pleasure had held dumb--cried out, under misfortune, like a homeless child for its mother. Her longing took her by the throat, and the doctor had difficulty in dissuading her from going to meet death by the first train. She did not suspect that she was doomed in any case; he thought it kinder to deceive her. He had preached 'Patience, mademoiselle, a little patience!' And she had wrung her hands, but yielded--sustained by the hope of a future that she was never to know.
"By this time the last of her jewels was sold, and most of the money had been spent. The fact alarmed her when she dwelt upon it, but she did not dwell upon it very often--in the career of Little-Flower-of- the-Wood, so many financial crises had been righted at the last moment. No, although there was nobody now to whom she could turn for help, it was not anxiety that bowed her; the thoughts by which she was stricken, as she sauntered feebly on the eternal promenade, were that in Paris they no longer talked of her, and that her prettiness had passed away. She was forgotten, ugly! The tragedy of her exile was that.
"Now it was that she found out the truth--she learnt that there was no chance of her recovering. She made no reproaches for the lies that had been told her; she recognized that they had been well meant. All she said was, 'I am glad that it is not too late; I may see Paris still before the curtain tumbles--I shall go at once.'
"Not many months of life remained to her, but they were more numerous than her louis. It was an unfamiliar Paris that she returned to! She had quitted the Paris of the frivolous and feted; she came back to the Paris of the outcast poor. The world that she had remembered gave her no welcome--she peered through its shut windows, friendless in the streets.
"Gentlemen, last night all the customers had gone from the little Cafe du Bon Vieux Temps but a woman in a shabby opera-cloak--a woman with tragic eyes, and half a lung. She sat fingering her glass of beer absently, though the clock over the desk pointed to a quarter to midnight, and at midnight beer-drinkers are no longer desired in the Bon Vieux Temps. But she was a stranger; it was concluded that she didn't know.
"Adolphe approached to enlighten her; 'Madame wishes to order supper?' he asked.
"The stranger shook her head.
"'Madame will have champagne?'
"'Don't bother me!' said the woman.
"Adolphe nodded toward the bock contemptuously. 'After midnight, only champagne is served here,' he said; 'it is the rule of the house,'
"'A fig for the rule!' scoffed the woman; 'I am going to stop.'
"Adolphe retired and sought the _patron_, and Dupont advanced to her with dignity.
"'Madame is plainly ignorant of our arrangements,' he began; 'at twelve o'clock one cannot remain here for the cost of a bock--the restaurant becomes very gay,'
"'So I believe,' she said; 'I want to see the gaiety,'
"'It also becomes expensive. I will explain. During the evening we serve a dinner at two francs for our clients in the neighbourhood--and until twelve o'clock one may order bocks, or what one wishes, at strictly moderate prices. But at twelve o'clock there is a change; we have quite a different class of trade. The world that amuses itself arrives here to sup and to dance. As a supper-house, the Bori Vieux Temps is known to all Paris.'
"'One lives and learns!' said the woman, ironically; 'but I--know more about the Bon Vieux Temps than you seem to think. I can tell you the history of its success.'
"'Madame?' Dupont regarded her with haughty eyes.
"'Three years ago, monsieur, there was no "different class of trade" at twelve o'clock, and no champagne. The dinners at two francs for your clients in the neighbourhood were all that you aspired to. You did the cooking yourself in those days, and you did not sport a white waistcoat and a gold watch-chain.'
"'These things have nothing to do with it. You will comply with the rule, or you must go. All is said!' "'One night Little-Flower-of-the- Wood had a whim to sup here,' continued the woman as if he had not spoken. 'She had passed the place in her carriage and fancied its name, or its flowerpot--or she wanted to do something new. Anyhow, she had the whim! I see you have the telephone behind the desk, monsieur--your little restaurant was not on the telephone when she wished to reserve a table that night; she had to reserve it by a messenger.'
"'Well, well?' said Dupont, impatiently.
"'But you were a shrewd man; you saw your luck and leapt at it--and when she entered with her party, you received her like a queen. You had even hired a piano, you said, in case Little-Flower-of-the-Wood might wish to play. I notice that a piano is in the corner now--no doubt you soon saved the money to buy one.'
"'How do you know all this, you?' Dupont's gaze was curious.
"'Her freak pleased her, and she came again and again--and others came, just to see her here. Then you recognized that your clients from the neighbourhood were out of place among the spendthrifts, who yielded more profit in a night than all the two-franc dinners in a month; you said, "At twelve o'clock there shall be no more bocks, only champagne!" I had made your restaurant famous--and you introduced the great rule that you now command me to obey.'
"'You? You are Little-Flower-of-the-Wood?'
"'Yes, it was I who did it for you,' she said quietly. 'And the restaurant flourished after Little-Flower-of-the-Wood had faded. Well, to-night I want to spend an hour here again, for the sake of what I used to be. Time brings changes, you understand, and I cannot conform with the great rule.' She opened the opera-cloak, trembling, and he saw that beneath it Little-Flower-of-the-Wood was in rags.
"'I am very poor and ill,' she went on. 'I have been away in the South for more than two years; they told me I ought to stop there, but I had to see Paris once more! What does it matter? I shall finish here a little sooner, that is all. I lodge close by, in a garret. The garret is very dirty, but I hear the muisc from the Bal Tabarin across the way. I like that--I persuade myself I am living the happy life I used to have. When I am tossing sleepless, I hear the noise and laughter of the crowd coming out, and blow kisses to them in the dark. You see, although one is forgotten, one cannot forget. I pray that their laughter will come up to me right at the end, before I die.'
"'You cannot afford to enter Tabarin's?' faltered Dupont; 'you are so stony as that?'
"'So stony as that!' she said. 'And I repeat that to-night I want to pass an hour in the midst of the life I loved. Monsieur, remember how you came to make your rule! Break it for me once! Let me stay here to-night for a bock!'
"Dupont is a restaurateur, but he is also a man. He took both her hands, and the waiters were astonished to perceive that the _patron_ was crying.
"'My child,' he stammered, 'you will sup here as my guest.'
"Adolphe set before her champagne that she sipped feverishly, and a supper that she was too ill to eat. And cabs came rattling from the Boulevard with boisterous men and women who no longer recalled her name--and with other 'Little-Flowers-of-the-Wood,' who had sprung up since her day.
"The woman who used to reign there sat among them looking back, until the last jest was bandied, and the last bottle was drained. Then she bade her host 'good-bye,' and crawled home--to the garret where she 'heard the music of the ball'; the garret where she 'prayed that the laughter would come up to her right at the end, before she died.'"
Janiaud finished the absinthe, and lurched to his feet. "That's all."
"Great Scott," said the Editor, "I wish he could write in English! But --but it's very pitiable, she may starve there; something ought to be done.... Can you tell us where she is living, monsieur?"
The poet shrugged his shoulders. "Is there no satisfying you? You asked me for the history of the Bon Vieux Temps, and there are things that even I do not know. However, I have done my best. I cannot say where the lady is living, but I can tell you where she was born." He pointed, with a drunken laugh, to his glass: "There!"
A MIRACLE IN MONTMARTRE
Lajeunie, the luckless novelist, went to Pitou, the unrecognized composer, saying, "I have a superb scenario for a revue. Let us join forces! I promise you we shall make a fortune; we shall exchange our attics for first floors of fashion, and be wealthy enough to wear sable overcoats and Panama hats at the same time." In ordinary circumstances, of course, Pitou would have collaborated only with Tricotrin, but Tricotrin was just then engrossed by a tragedy in blank verse and seven acts, and he said to them, "Make a fortune together by all means, my comrades; I should be unreasonable if I raised objections to having rich friends."
Accordingly the pair worked like heroes of biography, and, after vicissitudes innumerable, _Patatras_ was practically accepted at La Coupole. The manager even hinted that Fifi Blondette might be seen in the leading part. La Coupole, and Blondette! Pitou and Lajeunie could scarcely credit their ears. To be sure, she was no actress, and her voice was rather unpleasant, and she would probably want everything rewritten fifteen times before it satisfied her; but she was a beautiful woman and all Paris paid to look at her when she graced a stage; and she had just ruined Prince Czernowitz, which gave her name an additional value. "Upon my word," gasped Pitou, "our luck seems as incredible, my dear Lajeunie, as the plot of any of your novels! Come and have a drink!"
"I feel like Rodolphe at the end of _La Vie de Boheme_," he confided to Tricotrin in their garret one winter's night, as they went supper-less to their beds. "Now that the days of privation are past, I recall them with something like regret. The shock of the laundress's totals, the meagre dinners at the Bel Avenir, these things have a fascination now that I part from them. I do not wish to sound ungrateful, but I cannot help wondering if my millions will impair the taste of life to me."
"To me they will make it taste much better," said Tricotrin, "for I shall have somebody to borrow money from, and I shall get enough blankets. _Brrr_! how cold I am! Besides, you need not lose touch with Montmartre because you are celebrated--you can invite us all to your magnificent abode. Also, you can dine at the Bel Avenir still, if sentiment pulls you that way."
"I shall certainly dine there," averred Pitou. "And I shall buy a house for my parents, with a peacock and some deer on the lawn. At the same time, a triumph is not without its pathos. I see my return to the Bel Avenir, the old affections in my heart, the old greetings on my lips-- and I see the fellows constrained and formal in my presence. I see madame apologising for the cuisine, instead of reminding me that my credit is exhausted, and the waiter polishing my glass, instead of indicating the cheapest item on the menu. Such changes hurt!" He was much moved. "A fortune is not everything," he sighed, forgetting that his pockets were as empty as his stomach. "Poverty yielded joys which I no longer know."
The poet embraced him with emotion. "I rejoice to find that Fame has not spoilt your nature," he cried; and he, too, forgot the empty pockets, and that the contract from La Coupole had yet to come. "Yes, we had hard times together, you and I, and I am still a nobody, but we shall be chums as long as we live. I feel that you can unbosom yourself to me, the poor bohemian, more freely than to any Immortal with whom you hobnob in scenes of splendour."
"Oh indeed, indeed!" assented Pitou, weeping. "You are as dear to me now as in the days of our struggles; I should curse my affluence if it made you doubt that! Good-night, my brother; God bless you."
He lay between the ragged sheets; and half an hour crept by.
"Gustave!"
"Well?" said Tricotrin, looking towards the other bed. "Not asleep yet?"
"I cannot sleep--hunger is gnawing at me."
"Ah, what a relentless realist is this hunger," complained the poet, "how it destroys one's illusions!"
"Is there nothing to eat in the cupboard?"
"Not a crumb--I am ravenous myself. But I recall a broken cigarette in my waistcoat pocket; let us cut it in halves!"
They strove, shivering, to appease their pangs by slow whiffs of a Caporal, and while they supped in this unsatisfactory fashion, there came an impetuous knocking at the street door.
"It must be that La Coupole has sent you a sack of gold to go on with!" Tricotrin opined. "Put your head out and see."
"It is Lajeunie," announced the composer, withdrawing from the window with chattering teeth. "What the devil can he want? I suppose I must go down and let him in."
"Perhaps we can get some more cigarettes from him," said Tricotrin; "it might have been worse."
But when the novelist appeared, the first thing he stammered was, "Give me a cigarette, one of you fellows, or I shall die!"
"Well, then, dictate your last wishes to us!" returned Pitou. "Do you come here under the impression that the house is a tobacconist's? What is the matter with you, what is up?" "For three hours," snuffled Lajeunie, who looked half frozen and kept shuddering violently, "for three hours I have been pacing the streets, questioning whether I should break the news to you to-night or not. In one moment I told myself that it would be better to withhold it till the morning; in the next I felt that you had a right to hear it without delay. Hour after hour, in the snow, I turned the matter over in my mind, and--"
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Pitou, "is this an interminable serial at so much a column? Come to the point!"
Lajeunie beat his breast. "I am distracted," he faltered, "I am no longer master of myself. Listen! It occurred to me this evening that I might do worse than pay a visit to La Coupole and inquire if a date was fixed yet for the rehearsals to begin. Well, I went! For a long time I could obtain no interview, I could obtain no appointment--the messenger came back with evasive answers. I am naturally quick at smelling a rat --I have the detective's instinct--and I felt that there was something wrong. My heart began to fail me."
"For mercy's sake," groaned his unhappy collaborator, "explode the bomb and bury my fragments! Enough of these literary introductions. Did you see the manager, or didn't you?"
"I did see the miscreant, the bandit-king, I saw him in the street. For I was not to be put off--I waited till he came out. Well, my friend, to compress the tragedy into one act, our hope is shattered-- _Patatras_ is again refused!"
"Oh, heavens!" moaned Pitou, and fell back upon the mattress as white as death.
"What explanation did he make?" cried Tricotrin; "what is the reason?"
"The reason is that Blondette is an imbecile--she finds the part 'unworthy of her talents.' A part on which I have lavished all the wealth of my invention--she finds it beneath her, she said she would 'break her contract rather than play it.' Well, Blondette is the trump-card of his season--he would throw over the whole of the Academy sooner than lose Blondette. Since she objects to figuring in _Patatras, Patatras_ is waste-paper to him. Alas! who would be an author? I would rather shovel coke, or cut corns for a living. He himself admitted that there was no fault to find with the revue, but, 'You know well, monsieur, that we must humour Blondette!' I asked him if he would try to bring her to her senses, but it seems that there have been a dozen discussions already--he is sick of the subject. Now it is settled--our manuscript will be banged back at us and we may rip!"
"Oh, my mother!" moaned Pitou. "Oh, the peacock and the deer!"
"What's that you say?" asked Lajeunie. "Are you positive that you haven't got a cigarette anywhere?"
"I am positive that I have nothing," proclaimed Pitou vehemently, "nothing in life but a broken heart! Oh, you did quite right to come to me, but now leave me--leave me to perish. I have no words, I am stricken. The next time you see me it will be in the Morgue. Mon Dieu, that beautiful wretch, that creature without conscience, or a note in her voice--by a shrug of her elegant shoulders she condemns me to the Seine!"
"Ah, do not give way!" exclaimed Tricotrin, leaping out of bed. "Courage, my poor fellow, courage! Are there not other managers in Paris?"
"There are--and _Patatras_ has been refused by them. La Coupole was our last chance, and it has collapsed. We have no more to expect-- it is all over. Is it not so, Lajeunie?"
"All over," sobbed Lajeunie, bowing his head on the washhand-stand. "_Patatras_ is dead!"
Then for some seconds the only sound to be heard in the attic was the laboured breathing of the three young men's despair.
At last Tricotrin, drawing himself upright in his tattered nightshirt, said, with a gesture of dignity, "Well, the case may justify me--in the present situation it appears to me that I have the right to use my influence with Blondette!"
A signal from Mars could not have caused a more profound sensation. Pitou and Lajeunie regarded him with open mouths. "Your influence?" echoed Pitou: "your influence? I was not aware that you had ever met her."
"No," rejoined the poet darkly; "I have not met her. But there are circumstances in my life which entitle me to demand a service of this triumphant woman. Do not question me, my friends--what I shall say to her must remain a secret even from you. I declare, however, that nobody has a stronger claim on her than Gustave Tricotrin, the poor penny-a- liner whom she does not know!"
The sudden intervention--to say nothing of its literary flavour--so excited the collaborators that they nearly wrung his hands off: and Lajeunie, who recognised a promising beginning for another serial, was athirst for further hints.
"She has perhaps committed a murder, that fair fiend?" he inquired rapturously.
"Perhaps," replied Tricotrin.
"In that case she dare refuse you nothing."
"Why not, since I have never heard of it?"
"I was only jesting," said the novelist. "In sober earnest, I conjecture that you are married to her, like Athos to Miladi. As you stand there, with that grave air, you strongly resemble Athos."
"Nevertheless, Athos did not marry a woman to whom he had not spoken, and I repeat that I have never spoken to Blondette in my life."
"Well," said Lajeunie, "I have too much respect for your wishes to show any curiosity. Besides, by an expert the mystery is to be divined-- before the story opens, you rendered her some silent aid, and your name will remind her of a great heroism?"
"I have never rendered her any aid at all," demurred Tricotrin, "and there is not the slightest reason to suppose that she has ever heard my name. But again, I have an incontestable right to demand a service of her, and for the sake of the affection I bear you both, I shall go and do it."